:.t;';';tt':iK;<;iii|;: 




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AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



THOUGHTS FOR THE OCCASION SERIES 

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A Repository of Historical Data and Facts, helpful 
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Monument to Faith. 
Plymouth, Mass. 



MAKERS 

OF THE 

American Republic 

A SERIES OF PATRIOTIC LECTURES 



BY 

DAVID GREGG, D.D. 

I'resiili-iito/ Western Tlieological Seti/iiiaiy, Alhxluiiy, l\,., 

Formerly Pastor of the I.afciycttc Areiiue Prcibytcriaii CIninh, 

Brooklyn, X. Y. 

HON. W. W. GOODRICH, and DR. SIDNEY H. CARNEVJR., 
Presiding Justice Supreme Court, Secretary 0/ the Xcn' York ///>/o/-;ai/ 

State o/Xetf York. Society. 




NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION 
NHW YORK 

E. B. TREAT & COMPANY 

241-243 West 23d Street 
^905 



1 1 



& 



LIBRARY of congress] 


Two Copies 


rteceived 


JAN 4 


1905 


COPY 


ciiiry 


t^oS- 


XXc. Noi 



Copyright, 1896, by 
E. B. Treat. 



Copyright, 190^, by 
E. B. Treat & Company. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 

This series of popular lectures is full of histori- 
cal data and pioneer incidents of colonial times, 
vividly portraying pen-pictures of the Virginia 
colonists, the Pilgrims, the Hollanders, the Puri- 
tans, the Quakers, the Scotch, and the Huguenots, 
with chapters on the influence of the discoveries 
of Christopher Columbus, and the work of George 
Washington as a factor in American history, and 
the effect of the growth of the Christian church in 
the formation and development of the nation. 

The book embodies the results of a large his- 
torical research. It sets forth in a vivid and at- 
tractive light the races, the personalities, the prin- 
ciples, and the occasions entitled to credit in the 
construction of the American Republic. It is 
highly suggestive of American history yet to be 
written. The book pleads for the broadest and 
purest type of Americanism, and is outspoken and 
fearless in advocating the highest interests of our 
nation. 

The American citizen will find in it enlighten- 
ment and stimulus for his patriotism. 
5 



6 PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 

Our youth, as they shall be taught in the uni- 
versities, public schools, and the various societies 
of young people, will find it a veritable thesaurus 
in their preparation to write or speak upon 
" American citizenship." 

The preacher will find abundant and helpful 
material for his pulpit ministrations, and learn how 
an occasional patriotic service can be made attrac- 
tive to the people, as well as a power for God and 
country. 

The statesman will here find facts and data for 
the equipment of argument and illustration, giving 
strength to and lighting up his patriotic, historical 
and political addresses. 

All of these historic lectures have been delivered 
with great acceptance to audiences of thousands, 
and on this account carry with them a telling in- 
dorsement of their life and power. This fact 
should weigh with those who wish to possess ef- 
fective patriotic literature. It is the teachings of 
such patriotic recitals that assure us of a future for 
our Republic. Their legitimate product will be 
intelligent Americans, on fire with a holy enthusi- 
asm to make ultimate America the realization of 
the brightest visions of the great men who lived 
and died for the Republic. 

This edition includes important additional 
papers, that more fully completes the original 
plan of the volume. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Old Dominion; or, The Virginia Colo- 
nists 17 

II. The Pilgrim Forefathers 



S3 

75 

IV, The Hollanders in the New Netherlands. 103 



III. The Puritan Founi-ers. 



V. The Scotch. 



^33 



VI. The Huguenots 169 

VII. The Quakers; or, Ideal Civilization 209 

VIII. The American Foremothers 249 

IX. The Oldtime Minister 277 

X. The Bench and Bar 305 

XL Some Medical Men of the Revolution 345 

XII. Columbus: the Results of His Life 369 

XIII. George Washington : a Factor in American 

History 399 

XIV. The Church and the Republic 431 

XV. The Honor Due to Our Patriotic Dead 461 

XVI. The Black Forefathers 497 



I. 

THE OLD DOMINION; OR, THE VIRGINIA 
COLONISTS. 



17 



I. 

THE OLD DOMINION; 

OR, THE VIRGINIA COLONISTS.* 

A GREAT Statesman of olden times, in speaking 
to his countrymen, gave them this advice : " Take 
ye tJiercfore good Jieed unto yourselves; " i.e., " Go 
to school to self." The advice is good counsel for 
the American Republic. We are to learn from 
ourselves ; we are to study our own history. This 
is not a narrow study nor an uninteresting study 
nor an unprofitable study. Our Republic has 
made history rapidly, and it has made it on lines 
altogether different from the other nations of the 
world. As a nation our Republic has sprung to 
the head of nations, and has led them toward a 
newer civilization and a more abundant liberty. 

We have a large history, for we have grown 
phenomenally. No nation on the earth can match 
us for growth; we have grown like the wheat in 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn, at a Forefathers'-day service. 
21 



22 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

our harvest-fields. Humboldt informs us that a 
follower of Cortez sowed the first wheat in Amer- 
ica. He found just three kernels in his supply of 
rice. They got into the rice accidentally. These 
three kernels he carefully planted. The dividends 
of this planting in 1895 were millions on millions 
of bushels. In the month of May, 1607, when the 
first American colony of Englishmen was planted 
at Jamestown, Va., there were only one hundred 
and two souls; now we number sixty-five millions. 
What is crowded into the history between then 
and now? The overrule of God ; the noble strug- 
gles and sacrifices of our civil fathers ; the planting 
of everlasting principles and the growth of the 
same into magnificent institutions ; the play of the 
forces and events which has made us what we are 
as a body politic — these things are crowded into 
our history, and to know them is to know where 
our strength lies and where our duty lies and 
where the source of our national perpetuity lies. 
Do we understand our own institutions? We 
cannot serve our country intelligently and effec- 
tively if we do not. Our national greatness will 
inevitably go down before a wide-spread national 
ignorance of these. As the great white dome of 
our federal capitol at Washington rests upon a 
circle of giant pillars, even so our national great- 
ness rests upon the vast circle of our civil institu- 
tions. These are the pillars of our Republic, and 
we should so know them as to be able intelligently 



THE OLD DOMINION. 23 

to guard them. I believe that there is something 
to be learned from each individual fact pertaining 
to us as a nation. For example, we are territori- 
ally one — solidly one. Our dominion is not frac- 
tional. With the exception of Alaska, it lies in 
one undivided body, animated practically by one 
blood, using one national language, and living 
under one law enacted at one center. And yet 
for all this practically the sun never sets on our 
territory. On the short summer night the light 
of the sunset does not cease to gleam on the shin- 
ing spears of the seal-fishermen of Alton off 
Alaska before the sunshine commences to flash 
on the glinting axes of the woodmen in the forests 
of Maine. We differ from England in this : we 
are territorially one. The British empire is scat- 
tered about the world in no less than forty-one 
different parcels. Now I believe that the fact that 
we are one territorially teaches us that we should 
be and should ever remain one in government, and 
that every attempt to sever our national union 
should be treated as treason. The very configu- 
ration of our national territory declares, " The 
Union one and inseparable, now and forever." 

My fellow-men, I beHeve that we need just such 
exercises as those to which this historical service 
calls us. We need something to incite us to the 
study of the history of our country. Our national 
history is a page from God's own book, and is full 
of divine lessons. We need to know what our 



24 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

nation incarnates ; we need to know what our in- 
stitutions cost ; we need to know how the builders 
of our nation suffered and worked. Our institu- 
tions cost time and blood and brain. Our Re- 
public incarnates scholarship and patriotism and 
reformations and revolutions, and the wise provi- 
dences of that God who is the eternal Master 
Builder of states. Are these things so, then we 
have something in our Republic to prize, some- 
thing to be proud of, something to be loyal to, 
something to perpetuate, something to pray for, 
and something for which we should send to God 
our whole-hearted and enthusiastic Te Deum. 

I am here to-night to tell you one of the stories 
which pertains to the evolution of our nation. 
There are other stories pertaining to this evolu- 
tion, such. as the story of the Pilgrims, the story 
of the Puritans, the story of the Hollanders, the 
story of the Scotch and their descendants, and the 
story of the Huguenots. To-night our story is to 
be the story of " Old Dominion, the Colony of 
Virginia." 

This colony was the oldest of all the colonies. 
It was the first colony of the English on the new 
continent. It was unique; it was different from 
all the others ; it was the last colony from which 
republicanism had a right to expect anything ; 
but it turned out to be the colony that was fore- 
most in the inauguration of the Republic. With- 
out its lead and cooperation our Republic would 



THE OLD DOMINION. 25 

never have had an existence. Viiginia and Mas- 
sachusetts, standing shoulder to shoulder, did the 
planning and the leading and the fighting which 
ushered in the American Revolution. They 
pushed the Revolution through to a successful 
conclusion, and afterward they gathered and or- 
ganized the results of the Revolution so as to make 
them permanent. 

I have said that the Virginia Colony was the 
last colony from which republicanism had a right 
to expect any aid. I base this remark upon the 
popular and ancient name which that colony bore 
— "Old Dominion." 

Do you know why it was called " Old Domin- 
ion " ? The answer is interesting. It received 
this name from the stand which it took and the 
part which it played during the days of the Eng- 
lish Revolution and during the period of the Eng- 
lish Commonwealth, inaugurated by Oliver Crom- 
well. As Virginia was largely Cavalier in those 
days, it was full of Royalists. It was intensely 
aristocratic. It was for the king and against the 
Parliament. When Cromwell beheaded Charles 
I., thousands of Cavalier Royalists poured into 
the colony of Virginia. The colony took action 
through its officials, civil and church, upon the 
execution of Charles I. It called his execution 
murder, and it denominated the Parliamentarians 
regicides. It was enacted that all in the colony 
who justified the king's death should be considered 



26 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

traitors, and treated as though they had handled 
the knife and had actually beheaded the king. 
Sir William Berkeley, a fiery Cavalier, was the 
governor of the colony at the time, and he led in 
this legislation. The sympathies of the colony 
went out to Charles II., the son of the executed 
king, and he was declared the legal successor of 
his father. Under the direction of Berkeley, 
Colonel Richard Lee, a rich planter and a Cavalier, 
went to visit Charles II. in his exile in France and 
to offer him Virginia as a kingdom. Lee besought 
him to cross the Atlantic and to set up his rule in 
the colony as king. This was the first dominion 
which Charles II. had offered him. It was his 
oldest dominion. Charles never forgot this. 
When he was crowned in England, on the day of 
his coronation he robed himself in Virginia silk to 
show his gratitude to Virginia. This lifted Virginia 
in the estimation of the British empire. When 
coins were minted under the reign of Charles II. 
they had stamped on them that the kingdom hence- 
forth consisted of England, Scotland, Ireland, and 
Virginia. One of these coins may be seen to-day 
in the Massachusetts Historical Society's collec- 
tion. This was considered a great honor for the 
little colony to rank it with such great countries as 
England and Scotland ; and so the colony was ever 
after spoken of as " Old Dominion." Charles had 
dominion here when he had dominion nowhere 
else. 



THE OLD DOMINION. 27 

What hope for a republic, we ask, can come 
from a colony such as this? Yet the Revolution- 
ary leaders of Virginia, who formed an illustrious 
group and who gave America its illustrious and 
Revolutionary sayings, — the sayings that awoke 
the slumbering spirit of liberty far and near, — 
were men nearly all of whom were descendants 
of these bitter Royalists and Cromwell-hating 
Cavaliers. It was a descendant of this very Rich- 
ard Lee who went to France to bring Charles II. 
to Virginia to rule as king, viz., Richard Henry 
Lee, who originated the Committee of Correspon- 
dence which brought the thirteen colonies together 
to strike unitedly for freedom, and who was the 
author of the " Address to the Colonies," and 
who, in the Continental Congress, moved Amer- 
ica's Declaration of Independence in these words, 
which he ofTered as a motion : "Resolved, That 
these united colonies are and ought to be free and 
independent States, and that all political connec- 
tion between them and the state of Great Britain 
is and ought to be totally dissolved." This mo- 
tion, made by Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, 
was seconded by John Adams, a leader from Mas- 
sachusetts, and having been debated for three full 
days, it was finally passed. Thus Richard Henry 
Lee was a leader and a great man in the new 
times of Virginia, just as his ancestor, Richard 
Lee, was a leader and a pushing man in the old 
times of Virginia. 



28 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

The first point which I wish to make is this : 
Old Dominion served America and told in its 
higher and present making by the things which 
she fought out of existence and eternally buried 
and by the progress which she made upon her own 
self. She struck down and buried the ideals and 
the principles and the prejudices and the proposals 
of Richard Lee of the time of the Cromwellian 
Commonwealth, and she made way for and adopted 
the advanced ideals and the republican princi- 
ples of Richard Henry Lee of the Revolutionary 
era. 

The history of the Virginia Colony has not as 
yet been fully and worthily written. No Ameri- 
can history has been adequately written except 
the history of New England. New England, 
whose ideal has been education, has through its 
oldest and best-equipped universities produced 
the scholars of America and has given the country 
its national poets, and these have rewarded her by 
writing her history and putting it into verse and 
song. There is no discount on the history of New 
England ; I am not derogating it ; I am only say- 
ing that she is fortunate in having the pioneer his- 
torians of America. The other colonies will some 
day have their historians, and then we shall have 
a new era in American history- writing. Virginia's 
day is coming; her history is full of remarkable 
scenes ; they only need to be well told or cast into 
the form of romance or allowed to flow from the 



THE OLD DOMINION. 29 

pen of the poet in jeweled words. Give them a 
Longfellow and a Lowell and a Holmes and a 
Hawthorne to take them from their homely and 
traditional form and recast them and put into 
them the charm of wit and fancy and give them 
beauty of expression, and they will go thrilling 
through this nation with a power that will kindle 
anew the old spirit of liberty and bring into exis- 
tence a strong, fresh love of country. 

The colony of Virginia antedated the colony of 
Plymouth Rock some thirteen years. It sailed 
from London in three vessels on December 19, 
1606. The names of the three vessels were the 
Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Content. 
All London was moved at the sight of these three 
little ships sailing down the Thames. Prayers 
were offered in the churches for their welfare, and 
their praises were sung by the poets. Here are 
two verses from a glowing lyric of Drayton: 

" You brave, heroic minds, 
Worthy your country's name, 
That honor still pursue ; 
Whilst loitering hinds 
Lurk here at home with shame. 
Go and subdue. 

" And cheerfully at sea 
Success you still entice 

To get the pearls and gold. 
And ours to hold 
Virginia, 
Earth's only paradise." 



30 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

The voyagers reached a spot on the James River 
where they landed May 13, 1607. They called 
the spot Jamestown, after the then reigning king, 
James I. There were just one hundred and two 
in this noted company. In the sailing- lists we 
find them classed as " gentlemen, carpenters, 
laborers, gold-refiners, jewelers, and one per- 
fumer." Unfortunately more than one half the 
company were " gentlemen " ; and the term " gen- 
tlemen " signified persons unused to manual labor. 
" Gentlemen, jewelers, gold- refiners, and one per- 
fumer " were not the stuff to fight the great Ameri- 
can wilderness. Why did they come to Virginia? 
Some had it warmly at heart to convert the In- 
dians to Christianity ; some looked to the extension 
of the British empire ; but the great majority ex- 
pected easily to pick up pearls and gold. They 
expected to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and 
ship gold. 

These Jamestown people had a hard time of it. 
In the first place, their leaders were worthless and 
indolent ; and in the second place, the majority of 
them who came for gold were sadly disappointed 
and paralyzed with despair. Besides this they 
had chosen a swamp for a building-place, and they 
soon lost their health. The first years at James- 
town were years filled with mutiny, internal strife, 
treason, epidemic, exposure, fever, starvation, 
massacre, disastrous fire, famine, and death. 
There was only one masterful man among them. 



THE OLD DOMINION. 31 

and that was Captain John Smith, whose presence 
and effort kept the colony from absolute extinc- 
tion. This man was only three years, all told, in 
America; but he made for himself an undying 
name. He returned to England. 

The experience of Jamestown was more terrible 
than the experience of Plymouth, and came nearer 
being a failure. Was there a reason for this ? Yes. 
Were not the two colonies precisely alike ? No ; 
they both came from England, that is true ; but the 
Jamestown Colony lacked this, viz., the presence and 
the patience and the pacifying influence and the 
elevating power of a heroic Christian womanhood. 
The Pilgrims of the Mayflozver brought their 
wives and children with them ; they had the home 
in their colony. Woman makes the home, and 
the home makes the church and the state. If 
Plymouth Rock had been minus the home, the 
future of New England would have been changed. 
The men who came over in the Discovery, the 
Good Speed, and the Susan Content left the women 
and the children in England. There was not a 
single woman in the whole colony ; and that is 
the reason they acted as savages and quarreled 
and were decimated. What could we expect 
from a hundred and two old bachelors — a com- 
munity of bachelors? It is as much as society 
can do to get along with one here and there in the 
community. A colony of bachelors never carried 
any cause on earth to a successful conclusion, and 



32 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

never will. God pronounced a bachelor in the 
midst of the glories of Paradise as unequipped for 
life. As it was, this colony of bachelors was 
saved by the hand of a woman. 

Just here comes in the beautiful story of Poca- 
hontas, who saved the life of Captain John Smith. 
Her father. King Powhatan, doomed him to death, 
but she gave him back to the colony that he 
might save it. Has Plymouth Rock the story of 
Priscilla Alden? Jamestown has the story of the 
Indian princess Pocahontas. She was beauty in 
bronze. Clad in doeskin trimmed with feathers, 
and with her feet sandaled with beaded moccasins 
and as beautiful as Trilby's, she came to the col- 
ony and went, an angel of God and a vision of 
love. Again and again, with her Indian maidens, 
she brought corn to the whites when they were 
starving; and again and again she warned the 
colony and saved it from massacre. Pocahontas 
became a Christian, and was publicly baptized by 
the Rev. Mr. Whitaker, the " apostle of Virginia." 
She married John Rolfe, with whom she went to 
England, where she was received by the royal 
court and greatly honored. Just as she was about 
to embark for home she fell ill and died, and was 
buried in the parish church of Gravesend, Eng- 
land. She left one son, who married a worthy 
Englishwoman and who became great in the col- 
ony. Like the Alden family in Massachusetts, 
the Pocahontas family in Virginia formed a sort of 



THE OLD DOMINION. 33 

American aristocracy. John Randolph, the fa- 
mous orator of Virginia, was one of her descen- 
dants. Of her Captain John Smith wrote to Queen 
Anne : " Her services to Virginia were as great as 
those to myself, for she was the instrument under 
God of preserving the whole colony from destruc- 
tion." 

I relate the story of Pocahontas at this point, 
for it comes in here legitimately. I am now 
speaking of the power of woman in relation to the 
history of Virginia. She was the first woman in 
the colony, and her presence meant the very life 
of the colony. But she was not the only woman 
that exercised a power in Virginia. There were 
certain widows there whose names have become 
famous in history. It is marvelous how the 
widows gracefully figure in this history. In the 
battle of love the very greatest men of Virginia 
were finally captivated and captured by widows. 
I never heard or read anything like it. Jefferson, 
who wrote the American Declaration, was com- 
pelled to make another declaration — a declaration 
of the surrender of his personal independence, — and 
that by a dashing widow with a fortune. Madi- 
son, the father of the American Constitution, met 
Widow Todd, and she immediately set him at work 
writing another constitution besides the Constitu- 
tion for the nation, viz., a constitution for home 
rule. George Washington captured Cornwallis ; 
but when he came face to face with Widow Custis, 



34 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 

she captured him. This last incident has led one 
of our pulpiteers to exclaim in a powerful sermon 
on woman: "Great is the power of woman! 
George Washington governed America, but Mar- 
tha governed George." There is a moral here, 
and it is for hard-hearted bachelors; it is this: 
beware of Virginia widows ; like Ruth of old, they 
glean everything that is in the field. 

But my point is this : the Virginia Colony never 
succeeded until woman, with her tact and love 
and holy life, came upon the scene. Twelve years 
after the three ships, carrying only men, had 
landed at Jamestown, another ship landed there 
carrying only women. In the year 1619 those in 
England who were interested in the colony, rec- 
ognizing its deficiency, induced one hundred of 
the handsomest daughters of the land to sail for 
Jamestown with the express purpose of entering 
wedlock and setting up homes in the colony. The 
scheme worked well, and in twenty-four hours 
after these beautiful daughters landed the parson 
of the colony had made a snug little fortune. 
The letters written home by these new-made 
brides brought another vessel over from England 
with sixty additional fair maids. 

After the establishment of homes in the colony 
the colony took on a new life. Dissensions ceased, 
adventure gave way to solid, persistent work, 
the plantations gave large harvests, and the white 
angel of health hovered over the whole community. 



THE OLD DOMINION. 35 

There are two questions which I imagine 
thoughtful men ask me just here, and I will en- 
deavor briefly to answer them. 

The first is this : How did the colony of Vir- 
ginia differ in its life and government from the 
colonies of New England? 

That question is a useful question. We learn 
by contrasting things; there is a contrast right 
here, and a marked contrast. .In the New Eng- 
land colonies the people lived in towns, and this 
determined their government. The township is 
still the unit of government in New England. In 
Virginia the county was the unit of government. 
There were no towns of any account in Virginia. 
Up to the Revolutionary War even its capital 
was only a small village. In New England each 
township had its own meeting, and there all were 
equal and had an equal voice. This Professor 
John Fiske claims was the germ of our Republic. 
He traces American liberties and American equal- 
ity and American popular institutions to the town- 
meeting. Virginia did not have town-meetings, 
for it had no towns; so Virginia did not contribute 
to the American nationality popular institutions, 
as New England did. All of our popular institu- 
tions came from New England ; but Virginia gave 
the American nationality men and measures in- 
stead of popular institutions. This will appear as 
we proceed. That is the contribution of Virginia 
to America — men and measures. Men to man in- 



36 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

stitutions and lead, and measures for institutions 
to work out into a glorious consummation. If 
Virginia had no towns, what had it in their place ? 
It had large plantations. Those of you who carry- 
in your minds the map of Virginia will remember 
how it is blessed with rivers. Four large, beauti- 
ful, navigable rivers flow parallel — the James River, 
the York River, the Rappahannock River, and the 
Potomac. The great Virginia plantations fronted 
on these large rivers, and this allowed the ships of 
England to come to the plantations for the produce. 
As trade was direct with England, Virginia did 
not feel the need of towns. This also kept Vir- 
ginia bound to England as Massachusetts and 
Connecticut were not. As the plantations were 
large, three or four were enough to make a county. 
As the county was the unit of government, the 
civil power was kept in the hands of the few who 
owned the plantations. In New England the 
people ruled ; in Virginia the few ruled. The few 
were responsible ; the few had to do all the think- 
ing ; the few had to do all governmental work and 
rule. While this concentrated, it developed also ; 
that is, it developed the few and made them parlia- 
mentarians, diplomats, and skilled statesmen, able 
to plan and to draft and to lead. This was what 
the Virginian patriots did in the Revolutionary 
and pre- Revolutionary times, and this was what 
America needed. It was a Virginian who went 
into Massachusetts and took command, and he did 



THE OLD DOMINION. 2,1 

that because In Massachusetts, with all its popular 
education and all its popular politics, there was 
not a man that could do what George Washington 
did. It was a Massachusetts man, Mr. Adams, 
who made the motion in Congress that put George 
Washington at the head of the New England 
army. Government by the few is not what we 
would choose to-day, but government by the few 
in Old Dominion made the men who drafted the 
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution 
of the United States and who led the continental 
army to the victory which gave us the American 
nation. ]\Icn and measures, that was the contri- 
bution of Old Dominion to the Republic. 

The second question which you ask is : How 
did Virginia differ from New England in education 
and religion ? 

We are still learning by contrast. The idol of 
New England was education ; it had its free public 
schools everywhere. Virginia did not take to edu- 
cation ; it did not wish schools for its black slaves 
nor for its white servants. General education had 
very little place in this colony before the Revolu- 
tion ; you could count its free schools on your 
fingers. The few who were educated went to its 
one college, William and Mary, or they crossed the 
ocean and attended the universities of England. 

As for religion, the church of New England was 
the Independent Church ; the church of Virginia 
was the Church of Eneland. There was no free 



38 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

discussion in the Church of England Hke the free 
discussion in the Independent Church ; but there 
were in it the truth of the Bible and holy doctrine 
and inspiring prayers ; there were in it that which 
brought God into life and that which created a 
conscience toward God and man. We must not 
forget that the Church of England carried in it the 
Puritans, and nurtured them until they blossomed 
and fruited. It also carried in it the Wesleys, 
until they blossomed and fruited. John Wesley 
and Charles Wesley both labored in the Church of 
England in the colony of Georgia. For Ameri- 
cans it was a good church to leave in order to be- 
come Puritans and Methodists. 

Let us do justice here. The Virginia Colony 
brought that church with it. The Rev. Mr. Hunt 
was one of the one hundred and two who landed at 
Jamestown. The first structure put up was the 
canvas church. The services were regularly kept 
up ; everybody was required to attend church or pay 
a fine of so many pounds of tobacco. Tobacco was 
the currency of that day. Ministers were paid 
their salaries in tobacco ; whether they would or 
no they were compelled to be religious tobacco- 
nists. The markets were quoted in pounds of to- 
bacco. My point is this : there were here and 
there in the Church of England as devout men 
and women as were found in the Puritan church. 
The individual got spiritual good from it ; but the 
church as administered was administered in the 



THE OLD DOMINION. 39 

interest of the English throne, and was therefore 
a hindrance to the march of American freedom. 
It was a state church ; and it is logic that a state 
church must take its creed and its conduct from 
the state that owns it and pays its expenses. This 
is the history of the Church of England in Vir- 
ginia during the Revolutionary times; it was for 
England and not for America. Madison says, " If 
the Church of England had been the estabHshed 
church in all of the colonies, the American Repub- 
lic would have been an impossibility." In these 
early days it was exclusive. It bitterly persecuted. 
All who came into the colony were required to 
support it and swear allegiance to it. The Bap- 
tists were driven out of the colony, and so were 
the Presbyterians and so were the Congregation- 
alists. Fines were imposed by its dictation, and 
so were tortures and imprisonments. It prescribed 
such things as ducking and boring the tongue with 
an awl. I do not think so much of that; for in 
those days such things were in the air. This in- 
tolerance actually was progress, if you put it side 
by side with the religious hate which scattered 
the ashes of Wycliffe on the Severn and which dis- 
interred the body of Cromwell and insulted the 
dust of the hero who made England great. Did 
the Episcopalians persecute the Puritans in Vir- 
ginia? The Puritans persecuted the Episcopa- 
lians in Massachusetts. There is nothing wrong 
with religion on this account ; no, the wrong is in 



40 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the application and administration of religion. 
The Episcopal Church of America in the process 
of time freed itself from a wrong administration 
and divorced itself from the state. It gave a wel- 
come to republican principles ; it ceased being 
English and became American. When it did that 
it was raised from the dead and became a power 
for liberty. There is a long distance from the 
church of the Rev. Mr. Hunt of Jamestown to the 
church of the Rev. Phillips Brooks of Boston ; and 
the distance is every step of it progress. That pro- 
gress carried in it our national development from 
a monarchy to a republic. 

Virginia had one other thing which differentiated 
it from the colonies of New England, and that \A'as 
the system of slavery. Within twelve months of 
the time the Mayfloiver landed at Plymouth Rock, 
a Dutch man-of-war entered the James River and 
landed there an ill-fated cargo of twenty negro 
slaves. That was a crime, which ended in our 
Civil War. Those two ships were two rival forces ; 
they carried in them principles which were in 
deadly antagonism. The Ci\-il \\'ar was simply 
the climax of the long battle between the two 
ships and their different thoughts and different 
principles and different civilizations. You know 
the result. It accorded with the overrule of a 
just and righteous God in the affairs of men. The 
Mayfloivcr won and the slave-ship went down. 
That also was progress for Virginia. 



THE OLD DOMINIOAK 41 

I should like to speak here, if time permitted, 
of the great rebellion which took place in Virginia 
led by Nathaniel Bacon, but I cannot. That re- 
bellion took place in 1676, just one hundred years 
before the Revolution, and embodied in it to all 
intents and purposes the very same principles as 
the Revolution. Had it succeeded our indepen- 
dence would have come a century earlier. Thus in 
that far-off day Virginia was training her sons to 
keep step with the coming continental army, and 
was also sighting her guns to bear upon tyranny. 

I have said that Virginia's contribution to 
America was men and measures. I must hasten 
to speak of some of these. And here I must ex- 
ercise selection ; I must center our thoughts around 
the Revolution. 

The first man with whom I begin is Patrick 
Henry. He was the leader of leaders. Speaking 
figuratively, he was the man who fired the first 
Revolutionary gun. He was the first to be called 
a traitor; he was the orator of the Revolution; he 
learned the principles of liberty from his Presby- 
terian ancestors, and taught them to the men of 
the Church of England. He gradually grew to- 
ward that famous saying of his which became the 
watchword of the Revolution, and which regiments 
carried on their banners and flags, and men in the 
ranks carried in letters that burned on their uni- 
forms, viz., " Give me liberty or give me death." 
The framing of these words was impromptu, but 



42 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the spirit back of them and in them, which gave 
them their power, was the growth of a Hfetime. 
He had made his famous speech against the clergy 
of the Church of England and won the case before 
the jury. He had made his famous speech against 
the infamous Stamp Act and had seen its repeal. 
Now he was ready for the famous saying itself. 
His speech in which he uttered the famous saying 
was made in the old St. John's Church, which still 
stands on Virginia soil. Feeling that the time for 
decision had come, this " man of the people," as 
he was called, arose and took the floor and ad- 
dressed the convention. This was the close of his 
address : " Virginians, there is no retreat but in 
submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; 
their clinking maj^ be heard on the plains of Bos- 
ton. The war is inevitable, and let it come. The 
war has actually begun ; the next gale that sweeps 
from the North will bring to our ears the clash 
of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in 
the field. What is it that gentlemen wish ? What 
would they have? Is life so dear or peace so 
sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains 
and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know 
not what course others may take; but as for me, 
give me liberty or give me death." As Patrick 
Henry uttered these words with both arms raised 
and his eyes on fire, it is said that a great thrill ran 
through the whole assembly. The people were ready 
to start from their seats and shout, " To ARMS!" 



THE OLD DOMINION. 43 

The next man to be mentioned is Thomas Jeffer- 
son, the " apostle of democracy." He first got his 
repubHcan inspiration from Patrick Henry. He was 
a young student at William and Mary College when 
Patrick Henry made his great speech against the 
Stamp Act. Patrick Henry put fire into his voice, 
Jefferson put fire into his pen. One sentence, which 
he wrote months before the War of the Revolution, 
began thus : " There is not in the British empire 
a man who more cordially loves a union with 
Great Britain than I do; but, by the God that 
made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a 
connection on such terms as the British Parliament 
proposes ; and in this I think I speak the senti- 
ments of America." It was Jefferson who said: 
" America was conquered and her settlements 
made and firmly established at the expense of in- 
dividuals, and not by the British crown; therefore 
the British Parliament have no right to exercise 
authority over us." That was clear and irrefu- 
table reasoning. Jefferson sums up his own life 
for the cause of freedom in these words in his 
diary : " I sometimes ask myself whether my 
country is the better for my having lived at all. 
I have been the instrument of doing the following" 
things: procuring the disestablishment of the state 
church, putting an end to the entail system, which 
tended to aristocracy, securing the prohibition of 
the fresh importation of slaves, and drafting the 
Declaration of Independence." Fifty years a^ter 



44 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

signing the Declaration of Independence he died, 
on the 4th of July. John Adams died the same 
day. 

Next comes the greatest man of all, George 
Washington, the " father of our country." He 
was the Virginian of the Virginians, just as he was 
the American of the Americans. He carried the 
Revolution in himself and the Republic in himself 
and the great American future in himself. He 
was in everything, from alpha to omega, and 
everything was in him. From the battle of Dor- 
chester Heights, when he took Boston from the 
British, to the battle of Yorktown, where he ended 
the Revolutionary War by the capture of Corn- 
wallis, he was in everything. Thus the Revolu- 
tionary War, which began in Massachusetts, ended 
in Virginia, and ended right near the spot where 
Patrick Henry uttered his famous words. And it 
was a Virginian, too, who fired the first cannon in 
the last battle, General Nelson. General Nelson 
was a citizen of Yorktown. When Cornwallis 
entered the town he made General Nelson's man- 
sion his headquarters. When the time came for 
the battle of Yorktown to begin, the gunners hesi- 
tated to fire on the home of one of their own men ; 
so Nelson himself stepped forward and aimed a 
cannon at his own mansion, and touched the fuse 
and sent a thunderbolt of war crashing through 
his old homestead. That act was magic ; it fired 
the wliole army with a fighting patriotism. 



THE OLD DOMINION. - 45 

When the Revolutionary War was ended and the 
treaty of peace signed, all was not over. America 
was not yet a republic. The critical time had only 
been reached. What was done afterward was as 
great as what had been done before. The victo- 
ries of peace were yet to be won. There were 
still dangers, great dangers. The colonies were in 
danger of falling apart and of entering into battle 
with one another. The war debt made trouble. 
There was financial distress. The Articles of 
Confederation which bound the new States to- 
gether were too indefinite and too feeble. There 
was a lack of power to raise taxes. Everything 
was chaos. In resolving things to order the Vir- 
ginians took the lead. Madison the Virginian, 
trained, according to Bancroft, under the Presby- 
terian Witherspoon, president of Princeton College, 
was the father of the Constitution which gave, the 
nation unity and power, and Washington was the 
president of the famous Constitutional Convention. 
It was this convention that gathered up the results 
of the Revolutionary War and built them into our 
great Republic. 

To sum up, this is what Virginia did for the 
American Republic by way of men and measures. 
She gave the country such men as these : Patrick 
Henry, the orator of the Revolution ; Thomas 
Jefferson, the pen of the Revolution ; Daniel Mor- 
gan, the thunderbolt of the Revolution ; John 
Marshall, the chief justice of the Revolution ; and 



46 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

George Washington, who carried the Revolution 
to success. She gave the country such measures 
as these: the resolutions of 1765, denouncing the 
Stamp Act as a violation of American rights ; the 
origination in 1773 of the Committees of Corre- 
spondence, which united the colonies in the defense 
of their rights; the call in 1774 for a general 
Colonial Congress, which inaugurated resistance 
against British tyranny ; the instructions to the 
Virginian delegates to propose to Congress the 
American Declaration of Independence, which 
Jefferson wrote and which Washington made a 
reality. After this she gave to the country the 
Constitution of which Madison was the father and 
under which George Washington was the first 
President. 

A Virginian raised the first public voice against 
the tyranny of the mother-land; a Virginian first 
moved our national independence in the Continen- 
tal Congress ; a Virginian wrote the Declaration 
of Independence ; a Virginian was commander-in- 
chief of the continental army all through the Revo- 
lutionary War; a Virginian brought that war to 
a successful close ; a Virginian was the father of 
the American Constitution; a Virginian was the 
president of the Constitutional Convention ; a Vir- 
ginian was the first President of the United States ; 
a Virginian first shaped our foreign policy ; a Vir- 
ginian first saw beyond the colonial irtto the na- 
tional future of our country, and first discerned in 



THE OLD DOMINION. 47 

the opening and new times that future which is 
now our manifest destiny. 

It is easy for me to draw this address to a con- 
clusion and to point its moral. The conclusion of 
my address is this : If we are to be true sons of our 
renoivned fathers, we must do as they did ; we must 
give our country GRAND MEN AND GRAND MEA- 
SURES. 

We have seen to-night the type of men that 
make a magnificent nation. They are apocalyptic 
men ; men who see in the future sublime visions 
for their country ; men of large prevision ; men 
who are not colonial nor local, but national ; men 
of sacrifice; men of*persistence ; men of progress; 
men who are not afraid to improve on their ances- 
tors ; men of eloquence ; men of powerful pens ; 
men of executive ability ; men like George Wash- 
ington, who had not only the genius of intellect 
and the genius of war and the genius of states- 
manship, but who had also and preeminently the 
genius of character; men who are genuine through 
and through ; true men and God-fearing men. 

" God give us men ! A time like this demands 

Clean minds, pure hearts, true faith, and ready hands. 

Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men whom desire for office does not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 

Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ; 

Tall men ; sun-crowned men ; men who live above the fog 

In public duty and in private thinking ; 

Men who can stand before a demagogue 

And denounce hii treacheroui flatte'rita without winking. 



48 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

For while base tricksters, with their worn-out creeds, 
Their large professions, and their little deeds. 
Wrangle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps." 

If we give ourselves to our country in the form 
of such men, we will be certain to give our coun- 
try the grand and needed measures which its des- 
tiny demands ; for grand men always carry in 
themselves grand measures. We are still in our 
formative period. The clothes of the boy will not 
answer for the clothes of the man. Growth brings 
new probjems. We need measures that will han- 
dle vast numbers and that will give to the indi- 
vidual his rights, while at the same time conserv- 
ing the rights of the many ; we need measures 
that will deal with minorities and majorities, and 
be fair to both; we need measures that will absorb 
our foreign elements and conform them into a 
right and lofty political type ; we need measures 
that will secure to the country an honest mone- 
tary system and that will not fail to put a hundred 
cents into every dollar. We talk of the old colo- 
nial and Revolutionary times as times that were 
big. Times are always big to earnest men ; our 
times are big to us if we are earnest ; they are 
crowded with problems that can only be solved by 
men like Washington and Jefferson. There is the 
money problem, and the labor problem, and the 
tariff problem, and the emigration problem, and 
the education problem, and the problem of our 



THE OLD dominion: 49 

foreign policy. Then there is the great problem 
of our relation to broad humanity. The oppressed 
in all the nations of the globe are looking toward 
America for light, for ruling principles, for certain 
guidance, and for a helping, uplifting hand. We 
have a mission to all the nations of the earth as 
well as a mission to our citizens at home. Our 
experience gives us that mission ; our progress 
gives us that mission ; our holy ambition to reach 
the highest civilization gives us that mission. It 
is our mission to lead humanity on all continents, 
and it is our mission to lead just because civilly 
we are ahead of humanity. 

To take a concrete case : there is the suffering 
Armenian race trampled ruthlessly into annihila- 
tion by the merciless heel of the God-forsaken 
Turk. Oh, what shrieks of anguish pierce the air 
of the Orient this very hour! What unnamable 
atrocities are inflicted upon pure-minded Christian 
women and innocent little children ! what profane 
and unholy mutilation of noble men — men made 
in the image of the one hving and true God! 
Behold how virtue is mocked ! Great God ! how 
can these human monsters go into Thine ineffable 
presence besotted, blood-stained, dehumanized, 
and crime-covered? How can they face Thy 
judgment-throne to receive their final damnation i 
Has the American Republic no interest in all this ? 
has it no duty? has it no mission? One thing I 
know, and that is this : silence is not its duty. It 



50 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

has a voice in this world, and it is its mission to 
make its voice heard. Let the Senate speak ; let 
the House speak ; let the navy speak ; and in God's 
name and in humanity's name command that 
rapine and self-inflicted famine and cold-blooded 
murder shall cease at once and cease forever. Oh, 
for a Patrick Henry to propose a measure for the 
present emergency, or a Jefl"erson or a Washing- 
ton! Oh, for a Marshall and a Lee and a Mason 
to call together a committee of conference from all 
the civilized nations of the world to set up per- 
manently an international court of justice to try 
just such cases as this ; to see that all men in 
power — men who are responsible to no one but 
themselves and their lusts — shall be held respon- 
sible to justice somewhere. No man on God's 
earth should be allowed to Hve a life irresponsible 
to justice. Why should there be courts of justice 
all over the world for subjects, and not courts of 
justice for rulers? So long as this is the case the 
system for the administration of justice among 
men is far from complete. With such an inter- 
national court of justice in existence, the sultan of 
Turkey could this very hour be indicted for mur- 
der in the first degree, and tried ; and if found 
guilty could be decently executed. 

We have to-day in our possession as- a nation 
the key of the old French Bastille, which in former 
days dealt out horrible death to innocent men and 
tender women, just as the sultan of Turkey is 



THE OLD DOMINION. 51 

doing to-day. When the Bastille was leveled to 
the ground Lafayette sent the key to George 
Washington. It hangs on the walls of Mount 
Vernon, where our Washington peacefully sleeps. 
I have held that key in these two hands, and have 
praised God that the days of the Bastille were over 
forever. 

Oh, for a measure, a wise measure, a strong 
measure, a righteous measure, an irresistible mea- 
sure, an American measure, a measure with the 
ringing voice of Patrick Henry in it, a measure 
with the legislative lore of a Marshall in it, a mea- 
sure with the sure victory of George Washington 
in it, which will hang the gory crown of the sultan 
of Turkey on the walls of Mount Vernon by yon- 
der key of the fallen Bastille! 

Measures — these are what our Republic needs ; 
measures which will grow and protect and bring to 
perfection a fine Americanism. There is nothing 
grander than a fine Americanism, A fine Ameri- 
canism is the equation of the highest civilization, 
of the broadest humanity, of the purest and sim- 
plest religion, of the largest liberty, of the grand- 
est personal and political principles, of the richest 
and most progressive Christian life, and of a mag- 
nificent manhood and a holy womanhood. 



II. 

THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 



53 



II. 

THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS.* 

Our chief duty in life is to look ahead. The 
golden age is in the future. It is among the attain- 
ments which as yet are unreached, but. which are 
within sight of faith. The standing command of 
God through Paul to humanity is, " Forgetting 
the things which are behind, press forward toward 
those things which are before, and seize the prize 
of your high calling." Yet we have a duty which 
we owe the past : to search the past, appreciate it, 
exalt its virtues, praise its conquests, garner its 
fruitage, incorporate its wealth of thought and ex- 
perience, and transmit its good to posterity, and in 
this way give it an earthly immortality. A right 
use of the past is a moral uplift. It is a necessary 
equipment for the tasks of the present and a prep- 
aration for pushing on into the future. 

I have often been impressed by the large place 
which God has given history in the great Book of 
the world. In the Bible historical book follows 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn, at a Forefathers'-day service. 
57 



58 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

historical book. The Old Testament opens with 
no less than eighteen books of history. They are 
interspersed with codes of law, it is true, but 
their chief characteristic is history. Then comes a 
book of sacred songs, but of the songs in this book 
many of them are historical from beginning to end. 
After the Book of Psalms comes the Book of Prov- 
erbs. Then a poetical book or two. Then sixteen 
books of prophecy. But what is prophecy but the 
forecast of history? It is history in the form of 
vision. The New Testament opens with five books 
of history, "the four gospels and the Book of the 
Acts : the history of Jesus Christ, and the history of 
His apostles. Then follow a few epistles, and the 
volume closes with the Apocalypse. But what is 
the Apocalypse? Simply the history of the future. 
In the Bible history is piled on history. The Bible 
is God's voice crying to man. Study history ! And 
God's voice should be heard. God is in history. 
Truth is in history. The expose of error is in his- 
tory. The exhibition of the possibilities and the 
potentialities of man is in history. The exhibit of 
the rewards of faith and of virtue and of courage 
is in history. 

Appropriate to this Forefathers' service, we should 
not fail to notice how God puts in the forefront 
of the experience of the nation of Israel the most 
striking pages of human history, and how attrac- 
tively He writes up these pages of history. The 
nation makes many grand pages of history in after 



THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 59 

time — pages which bear the names of David and 
Solomon and Elijah and Isaiah and Daniel; but 
none of these surpass the pages which open the 
national volume of the Hebrews : the stories of 
Abraham and of Isaac ; the courtship of Jacob ; the 
romance of Joseph's exaltation, a literal transcript 
of real life ; the biography of Moses ; the plagues 
of Egypt; the miracle of the Red Sea; the fall of 
Jericho. ■ I tell you that in all of these we have 
romance piled upon romance, and power added to 
power. There is the exhibit of God here ; there is 
the wonderful fulfilment of promise ; there is mar- 
velous growth from unlikely seed ; and there is the 
magnificent triumph of right over wrong. Back 
to this history of the opening of their race the 
Hebrews constantly reverted. Fathers repeated 
its stirring things to their children. The prophets 
and leaders of the nation used it to reclaim the 
people and to incite to faith and enterprise ; the 
poets ran it into sweet verse, and minstrels sang it 
to the stroke of the harp. Abraham and Moses 
and Jacob and Joseph never ceased to be powers 
and leaders in the land. 

When I read the early history of the Hebrews 
I instinctively say, Blessed is that nation that has 
grand men for its ancestors, whose first page of 
history teems with interest, and whose opening 
chapters are filled with God, and with human hero- 
ism, the product of union with God. Such a history 
will send a holy and inspiring thrill through the 



60 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

body politic age after, age. Such ancestors will 
stand as eternal sentinels, guarding the hberties of 
the nation and the principles of the nation and 
the faith of the nation. Such men will rebuke 
and command the nation and forever lead the 
nation. 

In its possession of noble ancestry the Ameri- 
can Republic is like the commonwealth of Israel. 
Israel had Abraham, who left his native land to 
found a nation for God's holy purposes. America 
has the Pilgrim fathers, who left their native land 
for precisely the same purpose. They took posses- 
sion of this continent for us, and they left us as a 
heritage a history which embodies the very princi- 
ples that have worked themselves out into this vast 
Republic, with its boasted institutions. They left 
us a free church and a free state and a system of 
free schools. They left us this golden principle, 
incarnated in working form: All men are equal 
before the law. Our nation in its greatness to-day 
is nothing more than the oak which has sprung 
from the acorn which tliey planted. And what we 
see is only a prophecy of what shall be. There are 
prayers of the Pilgrims still before the throne of 
God awaiting an answer; and God feels their 
strong pulsations beating in harmony with His 
purposes for America, and God keeps them con- 
stantly in sight, that they may be ultimately real- 
ized when the right day comes. When that day 
comes the)!' shall be tr^^nslated from divine decrees 



THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 61 

into human realities. The Pilgrim fathers are not 
through with America, and America is not through 
with the Pilgrim fathers. God grant that we may 
never part from them. God grant that our nation 
may never have any future into which Plymouth 
Rock cannot be built unhewn. 

I wish at this time merely to recount in a plain 
way the story of the Pilgrim fathers, and then to 
draw some lessons. 

The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock Decem- 
ber 21, 1620. Their story is more than a quarter 
of a millennium old. In telling their story let us 
begin away back. Let us begin with Henry VIII, 
of England. Henry VHI. threw off his allegiance 
to the Roman pontiff, and constituted himself pon- 
tiff, the head of the church in his own land. His 
motives were bad, but his step was overruled by 
the Lord, and made the starting-point of a great 
good to England and the world. He gave a stag- 
gering blow to a great system of iniquity. Bloody 
Mary took the English church back into allegiance 
to Rome, but, after Mary, Elizabeth broke again 
the yoke of Rome, and made the Church of Eng- 
land free. She brought with her a reformation, 
but it was a reformation which needed to be re- 
formed. She was a religious tyrant. She made 
herself supreme in her church, and passed laws that 
all should conform to her church. She established 
censorship over human thought, and lorded it over 
the human conscience. All who differed either in 



62 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

worship or in doctrine she subjected to severe per- 
secution. By sheer brute force she determined to 
create reHgious uniformity. 

Just here the Pilgrims come in. They could not 
conform, and they would not conform. Their in- 
ability existed in their will. Their principles con- 
flicted with both the doctrines and the practices of 
the established church. What were these principles ? 
These: (i) Christ Jesus alone is the head of the 
church, and it is a usurpation for any man or woman 
to claim to be head, or dictate to the church, or to 
prescribe its creed and worship. (2) The Bible is 
the sole rule of faith and practice. All the appoint- 
ments in the church must have a divine warrant be- 
fore they can be tolerated or be allowed. It is not 
enough to say, There is nothing in the Word of 
God against such and such an ordinance in the 
church ; every ordinance must be able to show, as 
a warrant, a ".Thus saith the Lord." (3) The church 
is an independent organization, ruled by the peo- 
ple, under God. This principle was directly con- 
trary to the constitution of the established church. 
In it a few bishops were the governing power. 
But out of the equality of all before the Lord, and 
the right of all to a voice in the church, grew the 
great principles of the rights of conscience and 
of individual liberty, the foundation-stones of our 
American institutions. 

BeHeving thus, the Pilgrims withdrew from the 
fellowship of the established church. They organ- 



THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 63 

ized churches of their own, where they preached 
the truth as they understood it. The result of this 
was persecution by the reigning powers in the 
church and by the civil government of England. 
At least three martyrs were executed for their 
principles. • Henry Barrows, John Greenwood, and 
John Penry were put to death in 1593. The mur- 
der of these men led to the embarkment of many 
individuals, and even of whole congregations, to 
Holland, where religious liberty was offered to all 
men. 

The story narrows itself just here. One congre- 
gation claims our attention from this point on. 
This church was formed in 1606 in Scrooby, Not- 
tinghamshire, England. It was organized by 
mutual covenant in what was called the Scrooby 
Manor, a house with royal associations. The 
Scrooby Manor was the cradle of Pilgrim liberty. 
The church organized in this house was the May- 
flower church, and it carried in it the future of 
America. To this church Richard Clifton at first 
preached ; but he gave way to a young minister 
who came to them, the famous John Robinson, a 
graduate of Cambridge, In that church were men 
destined to be famous in the Plymouth Colony, 
America. Here was William Brewster, the elder, 
and the leader of finance. Here were his children. 
Patience and Fear and Love and Wrestling, Here 
was William Bradford, the future historian of the 
church and governor of Plymouth Colony. This 



64 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

church in Scrooby Manor escaped persecution 
longer than the other churches, but at length its 
time came, and this drove it from England to Hol- 
land. In Holland it went first to Amsterdam, and 
thence to Leyden, where it remained some eleven 
or twelve years. 

Now for the most important step, the embarka- 
tion for America. Why did this little church deter- 
mine to quit Holland ? This question brings again 
into view the principles of the Pilgrims and the 
swaying motives of their lives. They had several 
reasons : (i) They found that they had no room for 
growth, no place or opportunity to develop them- 
selves to their satisfaction, and give visibility and 
practicability to their principles. The original stock 
of emigrants was growin j old, and they were afraid 
that their whole enterprise would fade out of sight. 
(2) They were anxious about their children. To 
use their own words, " they were in danger of be- 
coming degenerated and corrupted;" for the Sab- 
bath was not reverenced at Leyden as they would 
wish. (3) Their greatest reason was this : they had 
a burning desire to spread the gospel in remote parts 
of the world. 

Actuated by these principles, they sailed from 
Delfthaven in the ship Speedzvell, and, reaching 
England after various vicissitudes, sailed for 
America in the Mayflower from the port of Plym- 
outh. There were one hundred and two souls 
on board, and among them were John Carver, 



THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 65 

the first governor, and Miles Standish, the soldier, 
small of stature, but large of heart. 

Other events were taking place at the time they 
sailed. In England, Cromwell had just come of 
age and was moving unconsciously on to a career 
of influence which was destined to rock England 
and leave its stamp upon the whole world. John 
Milton was then but a boy, but drinking in the love 
of liberty which made him a liberty-loving man. 
Francis Bacon was a man of sixty. Shakespeare 
was working out his great dramas. On the Conti- 
nent the Thirty Years' War was just breaking out, 
which was destined to embroil all Europe. Such 
was the time when the Pilgrims sailed. 

Who can tell the tedium and the wear of that 
rough passage? Sixty-four long days passed be- 
fore (November 9, 1620) they sighted land. The 
land which they saw was Cape Cod. This was not 
what they intended to strike ; they had hoped to 
strike a spot near the mouth of the Hudson River, 
After excursions and wanderings and perplexities, 
thQ Pilgrims landed finally on the famous rock 
which they called Plymouth in honor of the port 
from which they had sailed in England. But be- 
fore landing they drew up and signed the famous 
Mayflower compact, and elected John Carver gov- 
ernor. 

The covenant carries in it the declaration of the 
Pilgrims' faith. It gives us an insight into their 
deepest purposes. It has the right ring in it, and 



66 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

shows a clear perception of the nature and obliga- 
tions of civil government. Thus it opens : " In the 
name of God, amen. We whose names are under- 
written, having undertaken for the glory of God 
and the advancement of the Christian faith, do sol- 
emnly and mutually, in the presence of God and 
of one another, covenant and combine ourselves 
together into a civic body politic." God should 
have the first place in civil government, and He has 
in the compact of the Mayfloiver. 

The suflfering of this little company of exiles upon 
the bleak and rocky shore of the Atlantic beggars 
description. Sickness and hunger and cold and 
perils from savages were among the things which 
wasted them. Still they held on ; and when the 
AIayflozvcrX.\xxxi^^ its prowEnglandward once more, 
not a man went back. Half of the colony died dur- 
ing the first year ; still the rest kept up their faith 
and looked for a golden future. They had to wait 
long for a harvest, but they accepted their scanty 
food, and always felt that they had reason for 
thankfulness to God. The historian tells us that 
Brewster, the ruling elder, lived for many months 
together without bread, and frequently on fish 
alone. With nothing but oysters and clams be- 
fore him, he, with his family, would give thanks 
to God that they were permitted to enjoy the 
abundance of the sea and the treasures hid in the 
sands. But the harvests came by and by, and a 
better future opened. Then began the building of 



THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 67 

the clrurch and the building of the school-house 
and the building of homes. Then began a life 
which opened and broadened until Plymouth Col- 
ony found incorparation in the confederation of the 
colonies, and the confederation of the colonies 
transformed itself into the Republic. 

You will notice that in telling this story I have 
kept upon a single line of history: the line of the 
Pilgrims. There is another line of history, viz. : 
the line of the Puritans. On that line I purposely 
have not run. 

This suggests the question. What is the differ- 
ence between the Pilgrims and the Puritans? 
From what I have presented you see that the 
Pilgrims were separatists. They left the Church 
of England ; they separated themselves from it 
entirely. They had their own churches. They 
were exiles for religion. The Puritans, on the 
contrary, who thought very much as the Pilgrims 
did, still continued in connection with the Church 
of England. They said, " We will work inside 
of the church and purify it." The Pilgrims landed 
on Plymouth Rock. The Puritans came later, and 
settled on Massachusetts Bay and elsewhere. The 
Pilgrims did not persecute. The Puritans did. It 
was the Puritans who burned the witches and exe- 
cuted the Quakers and quarreled with the Baptists. 
In England they even helped in the persecution of 
the Pilgrims, the separatists. The established 
church often used them as spies among the Pil- 



68 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

grims. The Pilgrims were broader minded. 
They befriended Roger Williams when the Puri- 
tans drove him out. Governor Bradford of the 
Plymouth Colony even visited Roger Williams in 
Providence, R. I., and gave him help. In Holland 
the Pilgrims had come into contact with religious 
liberty, and had imbibed the spirit of that liberty. 
They had grown into broad toleration. For Hol- 
land was the refuge not only of exiles from Eng- 
land, but also from France and from Scotland. 
The Pilgrims met with these refugees of other fajths, 
and learned to love them. It was this education 
in Holland that made them the true liberals when 
the federation which issued in our Republic was 
first formed. It was the Pilgrim spirit that domi- 
nated this federation and sent down to us that 
which is distinctively American. 

Having the story of the Pilgrims thus before 
us, the question meets us. What is our duty in 
reference to the Pilgrims? There is only one 
answer, and that is this : We should reproduce 
them and perpetuate their principles and their 
ideal institutions. To do this two things are ne- 
cessary. 

I. If we would reproduce the Pilgrims and per- 
petuate their ideal institutions, we must have the 
Pilgrims* loyalty to the Bible. Where did they 
get their principles? From the Word of God. 
It was^he truth that made them free men, and 
God's Word is truth. It was in the Bible that 



THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 69 

they found their ideal church. It was in the Bible 
that they got their manner of life. It was in the 
Bible that they got all their principles. It was to- 
the Bible that they went for those deadly parallel- 
isms which they brought against everything that 
was false. 

They looked on the Bible as an all-sufficient 
book, and they were right. There is no sphere in 
life in which it does not give ample instruction. 
What about Miles Standish and his courtship? 
Some one asks, " Does it teach anything on that 
line?" Yes. I verily believe that Miles Stand- 
ish, when he sent the young and eloquent John 
Alden to court and woo the maiden Priscilla for 
him, thought he was thoroughly bibhcal, and he 
was biblical in a measure. He had a Bible pre- 
cedent. Do you not remember how Isaac got his 
wife ? Abraham felt that the young Isaac was too 
bashful to do his own courting, so he sent the old 
and trusted household servant, Eliezer, to do his 
wooing for him. No doubt that is where Miles 
Standish got his idea. But why did he fail? 
Because he did not follow the Bible closely 
enough. He did not notice that when Abraham 
chose a representative to do the courting for his 
son he chose a very, very old man, and not a 
handsome young man. Had young John Alden 
been chosen to do Isaac's courting, I am morally 
certain that Isaac would have lost Rebecca just 
as Miles lost Priscilla. There is a moral in the 



70 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Story of Miles Standish, and that is, if you want 
some things well done you must do them yourself. 
It was in the Bible that they got their ideas of 
civil government and civil liberty, and this I es- 
pecially wish to emphasize. As Milton says, 
"The Bible doth more clearly teach the sohd 
rules of civil government than all the eloquence 
of Greece or Rome." 

There is no book like this Book to inspire Hb- 
erty. It has inspired all the liberty that has found 
incarnation in our national life. It struck Plym- 
outh Rock, and immediately that rock became 
our American Horeb to send forth a perpetual 
stream of blessing. It was the Bible that inspired 
the heroes -of '76. We all admire the utterance 
of Patrick Henry, which electrified the colonies, 
made the Revolutionary War a certainty, and 
helped in the inauguration of the American Re- 
public. His words thrill through the nation unto 
this day: "Give me liberty or give me death." 
But that sentiment was not original with Patrick 
Henry. It was a Bible sentiment. Solomon 
uttered it in substance. Two millenniums before 
Patrick Henry's day, looking upon the oppressed 
in the world, and walking among the downtrod- 
den of humanity, and realizing their terrible deg- 
radation, he said, " I praise the dead who are 
already dead, and who have escaped human woe, 
more than ye living, who are thus miserably alive," 
i.e., " Give me liberty or give me death." Bible- 



THE PtLGRtM FOREFATHERS. 71 

loving men have always been liberty-loving men. 
The Lollards in England, the adherents of Luther 
in Germany, the followers of Knox in Scotland, 
the Huguenots of France, the friends of Zwingli in 
Switzerland, Cromwell and his Ironsides, the 
Waldenses and the Albigenses of the Alps — all 
these were lovers of the Bible, and all these were 
heroes in liberty's cause. The Pilgrims breathed 
into the American atmosphere the principles of 
liberty, and these have gloriously marched through 
our history ever since : first into the Declaration 
of Independence, then into our national Constitu- 
tion, and then and finally into the Emancipation 
Proclamation, the crowning glory of the nation. 
Only as we are true to the Book of the Pilgrims 
can we carry on the Pilgrims' cause. The Queen 
of England, when asked once what was the secret 
of England's greatness, pointed to the open Bible. 
That which made England has made America. 
This certainly is the truth which those who de- 
signed the monument to the Pilgrim forefathers 
meant to teach posterity. 

On the brow of the hill overlooking the bay 
where the Mayflower was moored, and where the 
waters continue to beat in volleying thunders or 
in musical laughter upon its sand, they have reared 
a colossal statue of national significance. On the 
four corners of the pedestal repose four figures 
representing law, morality, freedom, and education. 
There these should rest by right. But above 



72 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

these stands erect the gigantic figure of Faith. 
Thirty-six feet she rises from the foot, which rests 
upon a slate from Plymouth Rock. With, one 
hand she grasps an open Bible, and with the other 
in graceful gesture she points the nation up to 
God. The only book she opens to the eyes of 
the nation is the Bible. And so it should be. 
The Holy Word holds the only true light which 
has led our advances into any national virtue. 

2. My final thought is this: If we would repro- 
duce and perpetuate the principles and ideal in- 
stitutions of the Pilgrim fathers, we must possess 
the Pilgrims' character and the Pilgrims' manhood. 
Manhood and character! These are the things 
above all things which the world admires, and 
these are powers. The Pilgrims were men — men 
moral in fiber, granite in nature. They were man- 
hood's noblest types. Manhood ! Nobility of life ! 
Nobility of thought! Manhood — manhood fash- 
ioned into a character w^hich is luminous and har- 
monious and self-adjusted and perpetual! What 
is there on earth beyond this? There is some- 
thing grand in it. There is something more than 
grand in it; God is in it; Christ is in it. A 
Christian manhood is a radiant thing; it is full of 
majesty and sanctity ; we never think of it but we 
desire it. From the Pilgrim fathers I learn this 
lesson: for the furtherance of the cause of God 
we must have manhood ; we must have men as 
well as principles ; we must have character as well 



THE riLGRIM FOREFATHERS. 73 

as creed. There are multitudes of grand princi- 
ples and grand creeds in the world, but they meet 
with httle or no success; and the reason is that 
they are not married to men. They are crippled 
and thrown into disrepute by the weak personality 
of their professed advocates. You cannot make 
heavenly and holy principles effective apart from 
effective men. Even the Bible itself needs men 
behind it in order to produce reformations and 
inaugurate revolutions. It is not the Bible alone 
that reforms and revolutionizes ; it is the Bible 
plus Zwingli ; the Bible plus Luther ; the Bible 
plus John Knox ; the Bible plus John Calvin ; the 
Bible plus Augustine ; the Bible plus the Pilgrims. 
Men are to principles what the cannon is to the 
cannon-ball. Men with no larger caliber than a 
toy pistol cannot hurl against the fortress of the 
foe principles which are the size of cannon-balls. 
For the victory of the truth we want men — men 
with a large caHber of faith and a large caliber of 
liberality and a large caliber of hope and a large 
caliber of enthusiasm. 

One of England's greatest statesmen was asked 
by a friend if he thought a certain measure would 
pass through the Parliament. His quick reply 
was, " It will not." His friend began to dispute 
his decision, and to forecast, and to reason with 
him as to the righteousness of the cause. The 
statesman replied, " I acknowledge that the cause 
possesses all that you claim for it, and I believe 



74 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

that it ought to succeed; but nevertheless it will 
not, and the reason is that it has not the right kind 
of men as its advocates ; they have not the char- 
acter and the consistency that hold and sway the 
respect and judgment of their fellow-men." My 
fellow-men, essential as principles are, principles are 
not everything. Principles and creeds of the very 
• best type are lying all around us utterly powerless, 
and they are powerless because they are divorced 
from the right kind of personality and the right 
kind of character. We owe the Bible, we owe the 
church, we owe our nation, we owe the cause of 
liberty, we owe the Pilgrim fathers a personality 
full of love, and full of sincerity, and full of stead- 
fastness and constancy, and iull of self-subjuga- 
tion, and full of the spirit of self-sacrifice, and full 
of faith and holy ambition. Let us band together 
for the payment of our debt. 



III. 

THE PURITANS. 



75 



III. 

THE PURITANS.* 

The American Republic is a great way on in 
human history. Plymouth Rock is a milestone 
that speaks of centuries of imperfection and ex- 
periment left far behind, and that tells of the near- 
ness of the world's greatest liberty. This is but 
saying that the American Republic is the latest 
result of the world's progress. It is the flower of 
which all the rest of time is the bud. This is the 
way all historians present the American Republic. 
They do not present it as an isolated thing, but as 
a related thing. And this only is true history ; 
this only is the way to exhibit the play of principle 
and the operation of cause and effect in the world 
of human life. Only by such a presentation can 
we draw helpful conclusions and construct advanced 
plans for the future. 

Do you knowhowMotleyspeaks of the American 
Republic? He says: "The American democracy 

• Delivered in "Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn, on the Sabbath evening prior to Forefathers' day. 

79 



80 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

is the result of all that was great in bygone times. 
All led up to it. It embodies all. Mount Sinai is 
in it, Greece is in it, Egypt is in it, Rome is in it, 
England is in it; all the arts are in it, and all the 
reformations, and all the discoveries." Beginning 
at the beginning of time, he thus sums up the 
march of events which ends in the American Re- 
public : " Speech, the alphabet, Mount Sinai, Egypt, 
Greece, Rome, Nazareth, the feudal system, the 
Magna Charta, gunpowder, the printing-press, the 
mariners' compass, America." 

The method of Motley is the method of John 
Fiske. He follows this method in writing his 
book, "The Beginnings of New England." He 
traces the history of nation-making from the be- 
ginning of time down to the making of our nation. 
Three methods have been followed. There was 
first the Oriental method of nation-making, viz., 
conquest without incorporation. You see this 
method in power away back in the past, and in 
the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates. This 
was the method of Babylonia and Assyria and 
Egypt. The second method was the Roman 
method, viz., conquest with incorporation, but 
without representation. The third method is the 
English method, viz., conquest with incorporation 
and representation. This method has been worked 
out into its highest form upon our American soil. 
This is the method which we are commissioned 



THE PURITANS. 81 

Still to improve and to bring to an ideal perfec- 
tion. 

This much we have gained by our present trend 
of thought, viz, : we must know America's past in 
order fully to know and appreciate America's pres- 
ent; this is the only way to see the real, full, great 
America of to-day. 

Thus it is with every nation. Thus it is with 
England. What is England ? The present millions 
living there to-day ? The present government 
ruling there to-day ? No. These are not England 
in its entirety. No. Let any nation in Europe 
clash with England in war, and it will find that it 
strikes against the whole past of England. Eng- 
land buried in Westminster Abbey will rise and 
live again, and fight again, and nerve the arm and 
give courage to the heart of men to-day. That 
nation will have to fight old Cromwell with his 
Ironsides, and old Nelson with his fleet, and old 
Wellington with the army that won Waterloo. Past 
England lives in present England. Past America 
forms part of present America, and lives in present 
America. To use a concrete illustration, although 
Webster's body had been in its grave for almost 
a generation before the inauguration of our Civil 
War, yet Webster's spirit was in that war from 
Bull Run to Appomattox. Webster was the first 
American to teach America her own greatness and 
the power of the federal government; and Web-. 



82 MAKERS OF TFE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Star's arguments were behind every bayonet, and 
were carried home by every cannon-shot, in the 
war for the American Union. 

If what I have said concerning the relation be- 
tween the past and the present be true, two things 
follow as a duty which posterity should perform : 
first, posterity must study history; and second, 
posterity must honor the past with suitable me- 
morials. Does any one say, " I have no taste for 
history ; it is only the stale story of every day's 
doings"? Believe me, history may be made a 
delight as well as a benefit. The way history is 
written in this last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury makes it a delight. The golden threads of 
romance are so woven into the sober russet of 
every day's doings that if you hold it up in the 
true light it will glow and glitter as brilliantly as 
though the hand of an enchanter had wrought it 
out of golden tissue, and constructed it into a robe 
for holiday attire. Does any one say, " I do not 
see any value in memorials " ? Believe me, you do 
not inherit this faith from your civil fathers. What 
means the Bunker Hill monument? What means 
the Washington obelisk in the capital of the United 
States ? What means the Fourth of July, the great 
monumental day of the nation ? What means Fore- 
fathers' day, which comes to us every year? Dan- 
iel Webster closed his oration at the dedication 
of the Bunker Hill monument with these words : 



THE PURITANS. 83 

" That motionless shaft will be the most powerful 
of speakers. Its speech will be of civil and reli- 
gious liberty. It will speak of patriotism and of 
courage. It will speak of the moral improvement 
and elevation of mankind. Decrepit age leaning 
against its base, and ingenuous youth gathering 
around it, will speak to one another of the glorious 
events with which it is connected, and will ex- 
claim, 'Thank God, I am an American!'" The 
words of Webster have been verified. He whose 
love of country is not kindled by standing upon 
Bunker Hill is not worthy of his country and pos- 
sesses but the minimum of patriotism. His only 
due is expatriation. 

We have not made ourselves nationally ; we 
have been made. We are an evolution, and grati- 
tude is our becoming attitude. We did not dig 
up the first precious gold ; we did not first unlock 
the secrets of philosophy ; we were not the first to 
give tone to the moral sense ; we did not first think 
the Republic into being. I can hear the drum- 
beat of the American Revolution as far back as 
the seventeenth century. We were not the first 
to think of the welfare of the masses or to assert 
the rights of the individual. We are not half so 
wise as we take ourselves to be. Back of our new 
machinery, and our new processes of industry, and 
our better homes, and our improved furniture, and 
our finer clothes, and our easier methods of locp- 



84 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

motion, and our increased facilities of exchange of 
thought, are the old slow-crawling, worm-moving 
ages. We have received our inheritance as a be- 
queathment from the fathers, and it is our duty to 
make acknowledgment of our indebtedness and 
celebrate the reign of God in their lives. This we 
can do by observing a memorial day in honor of 
their fidelity. 

A memorial day is a holy page from the book 
of God's providence, and on that page there glows 
the very same truth that glows upon the page of 
the Holy Bible. The study of the lives of the 
makers of our nation is not necessarily a secular 
study ; it may be and it should be a religious study. 
Our fathers came here and built here largely, if 
not solely, in the interest of religion. This was so 
with the Huguenots, and the Hollanders, and the 
Episcopalians of Virginia, and the Quakers of Penn- 
sylvania, and the Covenanters of the Carolinas, and 
the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts. This 
we will find as we study the separate history of 
these makers of America. Besides all this, we 
believe that the American Republic is the creation 
of God, and has a grand commission from Him to 
work out among the nations of the world. Now, 
the study of the Republic as a creation of God 
is a religious exercise. 

One thing is before us this evening as we cele- 
brate Forefathers' day, and that is the play of the 



THE PURITANS. 85 

Puritan influence in the making of the American 
Republic. 

On the evening of last Forefathers' day we 
studied together the history of the Pilgrim; now 
we are to study together the history of the Puri- 
tan. Then there is a difference between the Pil- 
grims and the Puritans? Certainly. If we were 
living in Boston and failed to make a distinction 
we should never be forgiven. 

Let us here and now set before our mind the 
distinction between them. Henry VIII., King of 
England, threw off his allegiance to the Roman 
pontiff and constituted himself head of the church 
in his own land. His motives were bad, but God 
overruled the step which he took and made it a 
starting-point of great good to England and to all 
the world. The reason he broke with the pontiff 
was, the pontiff refused to divorce him from the 
queen, his lawful wife. Separated from papacy it 
was not possible for England to remain Catholic. 
The consequence was the establishment of the 
Church of England. 

But when the English church was established it 
was found that all in this church were not of one 
mind. There were advanced thinkers who wanted 
more liberty and who hated oppression in a prel- 
ate just as much as they hated oppression in a 
pope. Where did these dissatisfied men come 
from ? Where did they get their advanced ideas ? 



so .^/.lA'EKS OF THE AMERICAN KEELBLIC. 

The answer of that question is a history in itseh". 
They were tlie spiritual descendants of \V}cHlTe 
and of the Lollards. Wycliffe and the Lollards 
got their ideas and principles from the Holy Scrip- 
tures. WyclitYe translated the Bible for the peo- 
ple, and thus set the cause of liberty in England in 
motion. Henry VHL lived in the time of Martin 
Luther, and wrote against him. He did not want 
England to become Protestant, but he could not 
help it. The accumulated power of WyclitTe's 
Bible was irresistible and gave rise to the Puritans 
whom the king found in his church. From this 
you see that there were forerunners of the Puritans 
long before the time of Luther. There were scat- 
tered voices all through Europe, like the early- 
awakening birds of the morning preluding the full 
choir of the noontide day. There was a growing 
cry rolling across Europe, and that cry. which 
rang from Wycliffe to Savonarola, from John Huss 
and Jerome of Prague to Zwingli and Erasmus— 
that cry, which swept from the Alpine glaciers to 
the fiords of Norway, and which broke from the 
lips of Luther like a peal of thunder — that cry 
was a cry demanding reform. 

I cannot here detail the conduct of the Church of 
England. It became oppressive. The church would 
not listen to those who asked for reform. On the con- 
trary, it subjected them to cruel persecution. But 
persecution has never put down any cause of God; 



TJ/E I'UrUTANS. 87 

it has always strengthened it and has always drawn 
sympathy to it. This proved true here. In pro- 
portion as prelacy grew Puritanism grew. The 
claim of the prelates ran higher and higher through 
Parker, Whitgift, and Bancroft, until it culminated 
in Laud ; but the resistance of the Puritans became 
stouter and stouter through Hooper, Cartwright, 
and Bradshaw, until it culminated in the West- 
minster divines. 

After Henry VHI. came Edward VI., and after 
him Bloody Mary. Queen Mary took the Church 
of England back into allegiance to Rome, Under 
her persecutions many of the Puritans fled to 
Switzerland — a land where the people were as free 
as the singing waterfalls, the land of William Tell 
and of the reformer Zwingli, the land where Cal- 
vin made his home and taught his sy.stem. Here 
they met with Calvin and drank Calvinism from 
the fountain. Every Alpine canton was a repub- 
lican community. So here these exiles of God 
drank in the .spirit of liberty. 

Mary was followed by her sister Elizabeth, Eng- 
land's famous queen, and in her reign the Puritans 
who had fled to Switzerland returned. She again 
broke the yoke of Rome ; she established the 
Church of England by law. In her efforts to make 
the Church of England all in all, .she declared that 
all her subjects should think alike, and worship 
alike, and conform to the ritual of the English 



88 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

church. She determined by sheer brute force to 
create reHgious uniformity. The thing was an ab- 
surdity. Until God unmakes us, and then makes 
us over again, religious uniformity will remain an 
eternal impossibility. 

Just here the Pilgrims come in. They rebelled 
out and out against the policy of Queen Elizabeth, 
and separated themselves from the Church of Eng- 
land, and formed churches of their own. Of course 
they were persecuted. This led to the emigration 
of a company of them to Holland, from whence, in 
the course of time, they sailed to America, landing 
on the famous Plymouth Rock December 21, 1620, 
and forming the famous Plymouth Colony. 

The Pilgrims were separatists. The Puritans were 
not. They were only nonconformists, and as non- 
conformists they remained in the Church of England 
in hopes that in due time they might reform that 
church and mold it to their ideal. The Puritans 
were still in England while the Pilgrims were in 
America building up their new colony. They re- 
mained there until the year 1628. This was dur- 
ing the reign of Charles I. The usurpations of 
this king made them restless, and, hearing of the 
success of the colony of Pilgrims in America, they 
determined to emigrate. In very many cases they 
were led by their ministers, and the plans for emi- 
gration were often formed by these. It was during 
this year that Salem was settled by John Endicott 



-J 



THE PURITANS. 89 

and his company. Now began what is known in 
American history as " the Puritan exodus." This 
lasted for eleven years, from 1629 to 1640, i.e., 
during the time that Charles I. arbitrarily governed 
England without a Parliament; 1640 was the year 
in which the Long Parliament began which ushered 
in the wonderful times of Cromwell. Cromwell's 
time gave the Puritans of England something to 
do in their own land, and hence emigration ceased. 
Their mission then was to rally around Cromwell 
and Pym and Hampden and Milton, and assert the 
rights of the people against the tyranny of the 
crown. 

It was during the period of the exodus that 
John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachu- 
setts, came to America. It was then that Bos- 
ton and Cambridge and Watertown and Roxbury 
and Dorchester were settled. All were separate 
communities. It was during this period that 
Roger Williams settled in Rhode Island, and that 
Davenport came with his company from England 
and settled in New Haven, and that Thomas Hooker, 
wanting more liberty, migrated from the Charles 
River with a hundred of his congregation, and went 
to Hartford. It was in Hartford, Conn., under 
Hooker's inspiration, that the first American con- 
stitution which issued in a distinct government was 
framed. Thomas Hooker deserves more than any 
other man to be called an American father. The 



90 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAX REPUBLIC. 

government of the United States of to-day is in 
lineal descent more nearly related to that consti- 
tution of Connecticut than to the constitution of 
any of the other thirteen colonies. It was during 
this period that Harvard College was founded, and 
also Yale, and that the free public schools were 
planted. Away back here began also the oppres- 
sive enactments of England with respect to trade. 
As England's laws oppressing the people of the 
colonies could not execute themselves, away back 
here began the spirit of rebellion against England 
which culminated in the American Declaration of 
Independence. 

When the Puritan exodus ceased there were in 
New England twenty-six thousand Puritans. The 
Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock were the small minor- 
ity ; but that mattered little, for now in America 
all the Puritans equally with the Pilgrims were 
separatists. They all adopted the independent 
form of church government ; they were all here 
for the advancement of religion ; they were all 
striving to work the Bible out in every-day life. 
The Pilgrims largely believed in the separation of 
church and state ; the Puritans believed in a the- 
ocracy which made both church and state identical. 
Hence the condition of suffrage with the Puritans 
was church-membership. Thus it was at first, but 
by and by suffrage was enlarged so as to take in 
those who were baptized, though not church-mem- 



THE PURITANS. 91 

bers. This was called the "half-way covenant." 
Finally all religious tests were abolished. 

For one hundred and fifty years after the Puri- 
tan exodus, i.e., from 1640 to 1790, New England 
received very few by means of immigration. Its 
increase came from its own families ; it enjoyed a 
remarkable seclusion. There were only three ex- 
ceptions to this. In 1652, after his victory at Dun- 
bar and Worcester, Cromwell sent two hundred 
and seventy Scotch prisoners to Boston as a pun- 
ishment. They grandly bore the punishment ; they 
rather liked it, I imagine, for their descendants are 
there to this day. In 1685, after the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes, one hundred and fifty fam- 
ilies of the Huguenots came to Massachusetts ; 
their names are perpetuated in Bowdoin College 
and Faneuil Hall. In 1719 several Presbyterian 
families from the north of Ireland settled in New 
Hampshire ; their descendants are still in that State. 
Londonderry, N. H., marks their settlement. These 
were the three exceptions, and they were very 
small. When the hour of the Revolution struck, 
there was no county in old England itself that had 
a purer English blood than New England. The 
homogeneity of population accounts for the one- 
ness of belief and action in New England in the 
matter of the American Revolution, The people 
of New England were one people, and they struck 
like a trip-hammer when they struck. It was this 



92 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

unity and homogeneity which made them the 
power they were in the formation of the American 
Repubhc, and which helped New England to stamp 
itself upon the whole country for the country's 
good. 

It was only after the American Revolution that 
New-Englanders began to move into the western 
part of our land and there form new States ; but 
this they did so effectively that there is a Portland 
to-day on the Pacific as well as a Portland on the 
Atlantic. They now number one fourth of the 
entire population of our sixty millions, and are a 
beneficial force in every State in the Union. 

While the Puritans were diligent in building up 
New England, let no one suppose that they were 
indifferent to what was going forward in the mother- 
land ; they were one with the progressives there. 
It has been said that the English Revolution vir- 
tually began in Boston, where Sir Edmund An- 
dros, King James's representative, was arrested 
and put in prison. New England was the first 
to hail the enthronement of William, Prince of 
Orange. During the Cromwellian conflict Crom- 
well's strongest friends were in New England. 
The pen of New England, fertilized by freedom, 
became marvelously prolific. Cromwell, Hampden, 
Sidney, Milton, Owen, were scholars of teachers 
mostly on this side of the Atlantic. Professor 
Masson, of Edinburgh University, in his biography 



THE PURITANS. 93 

of Milton names seventeen New England men 
whom he describes as potent in England during the 
days of the Commonwealth. Numbers went back 
to England in person to join Cromwell's Ironsides. 
Twelve of the first twenty graduates of Harvard 
prior to 1646 were among the New-Englanders 
who were with Cromwell on the fields of Marston 
Moor and Naseby. 

New England served the liberal-minded of old 
England by opening to them sheltering arms in the 
hour of their peril. We have a striking instance 
on this line in the welcome given to two of the men 
who sat as judges and pronounced the sentence 
of death on King Charles I. Their names were 
Edward Whalley and William Goffe. Charles II., 
determined to destroy his father's murderers, as he 
called them, ordered their arrest and transportation 
to England ; but the New-Englanders protected 
them, and baffled the king's detectives, and saved 
them from the fury of Charles. This romantic 
story is told of Goffe, showing his appreciation of 
the protection given him. At Hadley the savages, 
during King Philip's War, made an attack upon 
the villagers. The inhabitants were at church keep- 
ing a fast when the yells of the Indians resounded. 
Seizing their guns, the men rushed out to meet the 
foe, but seeing the village green swarming with th^ 
horrid savages, for a moment their courage gave;, 
way and a panic was imminent. All at once a 



94 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

stranger of reverent mien and stately form, and 
with white flowing beard falling on his bosom, ap- 
peared among them and took command with an 
air of authority which none could gainsay. He 
bade them charge on the screeching rabble, and 
after a sharp, short skirmish the tawny foe was put 
to flight. When the pursuers came together again 
after the rout their deliverer was not to be found. 
In their wonder, as they knew not whence he came 
or whither he went, many were heard to say that 
an angel had been sent from heaven for their de- 
liverance. It was the fugitive, William Goff"e, a 
major-general of Cromwell's army, who from his 
hiding-place had seen the savages stealing down 
the hillside, and who came forth for one more vic- 
tory ere death came to take him from his wilder- 
ness retreat. The Puritans harbored this political 
refugee, and this refugee saved the lives of the 
Puritans. 

In giving this brief history of the Puritans in 
the favorable form in which I give it, I am not 
ignorant of the antipathy which prevails in a large 
area against the Puritans. The term " puritanical " 
is a term that carries in it to-day a slur and a sneer ; 
but I am one who believes that the slur and the sneer 
are a slander. The Puritans have left too grand a 
work behind them to be written down ; the great 
Republic is still too much Puritan in its make-up 
to allow gross slanders to live, 



THE PURITANS. 95 

True history is more and more taking the place 
of caricature in dealing with these fathers. It is 
sometimes said, " The Puritans stand for all that 
is austere and intolerant and somber and crooked 
and ungainly and unattractive and bitter and dog- 
matic and sour." It is said also that the Puritan 
protesting against the pope is himself in his peaked 
hat a worse pope than the Italian who wears the 
triple crown. He is called a fanatic, but let no one 
be frightened by that word ; fanaticism is simply 
a mighty grip upon a mighty idea. It was the 
fanaticism of Columbus that discovered America; 
it was the fanaticism of Luther that gave the world 
the Reformation. You cannot sneer the Puritan 
down. Macaulay says: " No one sneered at the 
Puritan who had met him in the halls of debate, 
or crossed swords with him on the battle-fields." 
The Puritans are often laughed at as those who 
delighted to sing psalms through their noses. This 
is a fling at Cromwell's Ironsides. Well, Crom- 
well's Ironsides used to go to battle singing psalms 
through their noses, but they sang through their 
noses to some purpose. If other battalions can 
sing through their noses with a like effect, I ad- 
vise their singing. There never was a troop of 
men on earth whose footfalls carried such courage 
and power as Cromwell's Ironsides. The story of 
their battles is the romance of history ; it has a 
power to thrill which even the heroism of the nine- 



96 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN" REPUBLIC. 

teenth century cannot exceed. The sparks flew 
from their swords like the flashes from a surcharged 
cloud; their ringing saber-strokes still echo in his- 
tory. 

The Puritan's lack of the esthetic has been criti- 
cized. In this he has been called narrow, and he 
was narrow. He was not in full communion with 
God here. God delights in the esthetic ; His mind 
teems with beauty ; and wherever in creation He 
has an opportunity He scatters beauty broadcast. 
" He lines the tiny seashell with lines of beauty, and 
tints the scales of the fish, and tones the hidden 
fibers of the trees, and flashes beauty on breast 
and crest of flying birds, and causes it to break in 
the tumbling avalanche into myriads of feathery 
crystals, and builds the skies into a splendor which 
neither words nor colors can paint." But the Puri- 
tan's lack here can be explained ; there was a cause. 
Beauty itself, painting, music, sculpture, all the fine 
arts, belonged in the Puritans' day to the oppressors 
of the Puritans. Those things had been so long 
a time in Egypt that to the Puritans they were 
Egyptian ; they were redolent of oppression ; so 
the Puritans simply put them in quarantine until 
the plague was out of their garments, and then 
they would be allowed to come back again. They 
are coming back. 

But what have we to say concerning their treat- 
ment of the witches and of Roger Williams? We 



THE PURITANS. 97 

have this to say : that even in the harsh measures, 
as they dealt with these, they ivere the progressives 
of their age, and were the most merciful people of 
that century. 

With regard to the witches, you can count all 
that were burned upon your fingers, while through- 
out the nations of Europe they were burned by 
the thousands and tens of thousands. With regard 
to Roger Williams, he is able to take care of him- 
self. There is altogether too much made of his 
affair. He was not hurt much, if hurt at all. I 
have only this to say of Roger Williams : if he came 
intoour day with his broad, open-communion views, 
he would have as tough a time among his own chil- 
dren, the close-communion Baptists, as he ever had 
among the Puritans. It is a picture — it is nothing 
short of a lively scene — to think of Roger Williams 
in the Baptist Church of America to-day. His 
battle-ax would make splinters of every human 
barrier which barricades the Lord's table as found 
in that sect. 

In our criticism we forget to put the Puritans 
back in the seventeenth century. This only is jus- 
tice. They must be judged by the day in which 
they lived. They were progressive men in that 
day, and if they were living they would be pro- 
gressive men in our day, John Endicott and 
John Winthrop and Cotton Mather, were they 
living to-day, would be civil-service reformers, 



98 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Prohibitionists, and full-fledged women's rights 
men. 

We have reached an age when there is light 
enough to see the Puritan in his true character, as 
a royal man of God and a noble leader of men. If 
the word " mugwump " had not been tossed about 
in these latter days until it has become defaced and 
soiled, I would say he was a magnificent " mug- 
wump." The word " mugwump " belongs to him. 
It is found in John Eliot's translation of the Bible 
for the Indians. It means a great chief. Eliot 
uses it in setting forth Joshua, Gideon, and Joab. 
These Bible heroes were "mugwumps"; this is 
where modern politicians get the word. 

Let us look at the characteristics of the Puritan! 
He was a man of God ; this was his starting-point. 
God was with him in everything he did ; this was 
his constant consciousness. Listen to an extract 
from one of the Puritan New England writers in 
confirmation of this : " Strike the Lord's cymbals! 
blow the silver trumpet! set the battle in array! 
For the Lord is with us. He is not an idle spec- 
tator, but an actor in all action to bring down His 
and our enemies. He orders every shaft that flies, 
and leads each bullet to its resting-place, to the 
wound it makes." This consciousness of God's 
presence made the Puritan self-sufficient in God, 
and gave him his persistency and courage. 

He was a man of one book, and that book was 



THE PURITANS. 99 

the Bible. The Century Company have not made 
a mistake in their design of the statue of the Puri- 
tan. They represent him as a rugged man with 
flowing cloak and peaked hat, and with a large 
copy of the Bible under his arm. In reading his 
Bible he delighted in the Apocalypse with its wild 
and stirring grandeur, but he was especially a stu- 
dent of the Old Testament. Moses constructing 
a nation and giving laws was his favorite ; and he 
often opened the Book of Joshua to listen to Joshua 
as he whets his sword on the tables of stone, and 
cuts his way through the nations of the Canaanites. 
The Puritan was theOld Testament hero reproduced. 
He was a man of principles. " Righteousness " 
was the great word in his life, and the great white 
throne was to him the most real of all realities. 
That built ethics into his nature and made him 
swift to render obedience to the voice of con- 
science. He was a lover of knowledge, and this 
led him to found schools and build colleges. So 
long as the Puritans' enthusiasm for education lives, 
just so long will Harvard and Yale be multiplied 
in our Repubhc. He was a man of religion, and 
because of that he has sent down to us the spirit 
which has built the churches that bless the land. 
The Old South Church of Boston comes direct 
from his hand. He was a man of large hopes, so 
he inaugurated large enterprises. He was a dar- 
ing optimist; his creed was, "Every good thing 



Lcf' 



100 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

that is possible shall some day become real." That 
is a grand creed for any age. He believed that 
obedience to conscience, as the voice of God, 
should be the rule of conduct for the state as well 
as for the individual man ; hence he sought to make 
the state a theocracy. 

The motto of Daniel O'Connell was his motto, 
viz. : " Nothing is politically right that is morally 
wrong." He was a growing, progressive man; 
hence the outcome of his religious life was this: 
coexistence, toleration, forbearance, mutual respect 
among the different churches of Christ, the one 
Lord and Master. Take him for all in all, and I 
choose the Puritan. He is my choice after a thor- 
ough sifting of the age in which he lived. I choose 
him a hundred times over in preference to the 
Cavalier, who was his rival and his despiser. Chiv- 
alry refined manners ; Puritanism created manli- 
ness and fortified the soul in virtue. Chivalry 
feared dishonor; Puritanism feared to do evil. 
Chivalry adorned life; Puritanism enriched life 
with conscience and duty and God. Chivalry 
taught a man to die for a lady's glove, a stolen 
kiss, a fancied slight ; Puritanism taught a man to 
die for human rights, for justice, for freedom, for 
truth. I choose the man who represents Puritan- 
ism, and him my whole being honors and blesses. 

His character is the one character and his power 
is the one power I wish to perpetuate in the life 
and in the progress of my nation. How can I 



THE PURITANS. 101 

best perpetuate his character and his power? By- 
giving myself up to the cultivation of his spirit, 
and by taking a front rank in my age as he took 
a front rank in his age ; by making a man out of 
myself and giving a God-filled manhood to my 
country. It is as Humboldt says: " Government, 
religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaf- 
folding to build man. Earth holds up to her Maker 
no fruit like the finished man." The citizen gives 
to his country no gift like the gift of a Christian 
manhood. I must give my country an ideal re- 
incarnated Puritan. If I give my country that, 
then with that I shall give it God, the one living 
and true God ; the Bible, His law for nations ; an 
enlightened and living conscience, i.e., the power 
and willingness to respond to God's law; institu- 
tions instinct with righteousness and truth. These 
things will make the Republic great; they will 
make its institutions perpetual, and they will make 
its army invincible. There are no regiments like 
Cromwell's Ironsides, where bayonets can think 
and pray, and where the highest spiritual qualities 
have been drilled into the ranks. Men of ideas, 
of holy passions, of genius, of enthusiasm, of faith 
in God, of righteousness, of spiritual personalities, 
of high ideals, these are the strength and the 
defense of any nation. Such are the men our 
Republic is searching for among her citizens; the 
Republic wants nineteenth-century Puritans — Pu- 
ritans refined and idealized. 



IV. 

THE HOLLANDERS. 



103 



IV. 

THE HOLLANDERS.* 

Paul, the chief of the apostles, upon an impor- 
tant occasion, in depicting the glories of the Hebrew- 
nation, climaxed his description with these words : 
" Whose are the fathers ^ He felt just as we feel 
when we give ourselves to the celebration of Fore- 
fathers' day. He pointed to Abraham, the father 
of the faithful, who pioneered for the coming gen- 
erations and found them a territory ; and to Solo- 
mon, the wise, who filled the territory with cities 
and wonderfully increased the wealth of the land ; 
and to Moses, the lawgiver, who gave the nation 
a magnificent code ; and to Elijah, the reformer, 
who brought the nation back into true allegiance 
to God; and to David, the poet, who put soul- 
stirring patriotism into the national songs ; and to 
Isaiah, the prophet, who saw thrilling visions for 
the kingdom and who proclaimed the coming of 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, 
at a Forefathers'-day service. 

107 



108 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the golden age. He pointed to these and said, 
** Ours are the fathers'* He catalogued " the 
fathers " as among the chief blessings of the na- 
tion. He said in effect, " Men, grand men, men 
of enterprise, men of holy optimism, men of faith, 
men in oneness with God — these are God's best 
gifts to a nation, and these in their grandeur and 
goodness are worthy to be catalogued with Mount 
Sinai and with Calvary, for they carry in their per- 
sonalities and in their feelings and in their princi- 
ples and in their characters all — all that is con- 
tained in the law and the gospel, and all that Sinai 
and Calvary stand for." 

Fellow-Americans, we have come together to- 
night to say the one to the other, " Ours are the 
fathers," and to recall together the words and the 
conflicts and the cardinal doctrines of the men who 
made America what we find it. We have our his- 
tory ; we have American men and women ; we have 
our authors, our poets, our historians, our scholars, 
our generals, our publicists, our philosophers, our 
divines, our journalists, our jurists, our scientists, 
and all of these have personalities crowned with a 
world-wide fame. The question is. Whence came 
we? As a nation we are young in years. Whence 
this tremendous growth and this great national 
power? What is the story of the evolution of this 
great Republic? I answer, the story of the fathers 
is the story of the evolution of our commonwealth. 



THE HOLLANDERS. 109 

I answer, the greatness of the fathers is the ex- 
planation of our rapid growth and the secret of 
our pohtical power. You cannot explain this age 
and leave out of sight the earlier age; you must 
bring forward the things that synchronize and the 
things that precede our age. Take the fifty years 
prior to the settlement of those American colonies 
which were the most mighty and the most perma- 
nent — the Jamestown Colony, the colony of New 
York Bay, Plymouth Colony, the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony ; take the fifty years prior to the day 
the first English ship, the Good Speed, sailed up the 
Potomac, prior to the day the Half-moon stopped 
at Manhattan Island and explored the Hudson, 
prior to the day the Mayflower landed at Plymouth 
Rock, and then add the fifty years after, the years 
of the first struggles of the new and daring colo- 
nies, which take us to the close of Cromwell's Com- 
monwealth, and to the hour when Peter Stuy vesant 
surrendered New Amsterdam to the forces of New 
England, and you can explain the American Re- 
public. The growth upon this continent was rapid, 
because there was back of it the growth of the old 
continent. 

The American colonies sprang up in the midst 
of one of the most marvelous centuries of all time. 
It was the century which carried in it both the 
Elizabethan period and the Cromwellian period. 
It carried in it the golden age of the famous Dutch 



110 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

republic, the United States of the Netherlands. 
No century has ever seen more than this century 
which I have bounded saw. It saw the close of 
Titian's life, and of Michelangelo's. It saw the 
completion of the dome of St. Peter's. Tintoretto 
was in it, with the audacity of his genius and the 
lightning of his pencil. It saw the youth of Leib- 
nitz and of Newton. It saw the entire life of 
Descartes, and the middle manhood of Spinoza. 
It watched Grotius from his birth to his burial in 
the Holland city of Delft. In it the telescope 
came and recreated the very heavens for man. In 
it the microscope was perfected and revealed to 
man God's perfect work in the realm of the in- 
finitely small. It taught that the speck of dust is 
with God an organized mountain. The thermom- 
eter, and the barometer, and the air-pump, and 
the circulation of blood, and the nature and use of 
electricity were among its discoveries. In it the 
Dutch and the English East India Companies 
were established. It saw the magnificent reign 
of Elizabeth, the great English Rebellion, the be- 
heading of Charles I., the Huguenot struggle in 
France, the revolt of the Netherlands, and their 
final establishment of the Protestant republic. In 
it the Bible received a new life and a wider mission. 
It had just been translated into English in time to 
gild with its light of Hebrew glory and Christian 
faith the rude life of our savage shores. Its liber- 



THE HOLLANDERS. Ill 

ating truths broke forth over the nations Hke light 
from the heights celestial. Men learned afresh the 
vast promises of God waiting to be realized, and 
these promises filled them with irrepressible ambi- 
tions. They learned the dignity of the individual 
man, and began to think for self and to assert their 
personal rights. This self-assertiveness and this 
holy ambition, which came from God, and this ex- 
pectation of something better in the future, this, 
this, THIS, explains the bound onward and the new 
enterprise which resulted in the American Repub- 
lic. Crowded into this century were Bacon and 
Shakespeare in England, Cervantes in Spain, Wil- 
liam of Orange in the Netherlands, and Galileo in 
Italy. (Galileo was condemned just five years be- 
fore Harvard College was founded.) Into this 
century must be crowded the names of Richard 
Hooker and Walter Raleigh and Kepler and Ru- 
bens and Vandyke and Claude Lorrain and Pascal 
and Milton and Cromwell. It was a century in 
which the world received, as it were, a new God 
to serve and obey and to fellowship with ; a new 
view of the powers of nature, with a new hold 
thereof; a new faith in man, his worth and his 
power; and a new world to be the stage on which 
to act out new visions and new hopes. It was a 
century energized by new emergent opinions, new 
forces, new movements, new achievements, new 
ideas, new opportunities. 



112 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Looking at this century, in the midst of which 
the American colonies were planted on this new 
continent, the evolution of the American Republic 
with its prescient greatness and its opening future 
is no wonder. It exists as a matter of course. 
There were, under God, a hundred social and 
moral forces all crying, " Let there be an Ameri- 
can Republic," and there was an American Re- 
public. We have a vast genealogy ; our roots run 
back centuries ; our annals are interlinked with the 
noblest of time. We are the result of a hundred 
wonderful historical developments wrought out in 
almost a hundred lands of the Old World. Our 
Republic is like a fine picture skilfully woven into 
a costly piece of tapestry composed of many beau- 
tiful threads, each single thread of which is a mar- 
velous work in itself and sufficient for a profitable 
individual study. 

In the addresses of this Forefathers'-day course, 
we are taking up and examining the threads of 
this tapestry, one at a time. The one thread 
before us to-night is the rich yellow and golden 
thread of old Holland. In our last address we 
listened to the Jubilate as it sounded out from the 
chimes of Westminster; in this address we are to 
listen to the Jubilate as it sounds out from the 
chimes of Antwerp. There is no discount on the 
chimes of Antwerp ; they are not one whit behind 
the chimes of Westminster. It is something in- 



THE HOLLANDERS. 113 

spiring to hear an anthem rung into the air by the 
bells in the tower of the Antwerp cathedral. A 
shower of bell-notes falls from the vast spire. There 
are all kinds of notes ; there are the deep notes of 
the great bells, which make the anthem roll through 
the atmosphere with the intonations of thun- 
der; then there is the ringing of the little bells, 
pealing forth the same notes in a higher key. 
These notes are fine and small and sweet, small as 
a bird's warble. They fill the air with crisp tin- 
klings, which are as distinct as the sonorous notes 
of the great bells. All have their individuality, 
and all help in making the anthem one which en- 
raptures and enchains. I take the chimes of Ant- 
werp to be a symbol of that glorious Dutch re- 
public which gave the world the anthem of liberty 
during the days when our American fathers pre- 
pared for and built our civil institutions. The doc- 
trines of liberty were proclaimed in the legislative 
halls and battle-fields of Holland by the deep- 
toned, rich voices of statesmen and soldiers ; and 
at the same time the same doctrines of liberty were 
proclaimed by the higher-keyed, musical voices of 
Holland's boys and girls, when, in the free public 
schools of the land, they sang the patriotic songs 
of the republic. 

In taking up the story of our Dutch progeni- 
tors, I notice in the very start that there are new 
claims being made to-day on behalf of the Dutch. 



114 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

American 'history is being rewritten ; new research 
is being made to find the origin of our civil insti- 
tutions. This is as it should be. History must 
be written and rewritten a score of times before 
we can reach the truth. We need the iconoclast 
and the scientific critic. We need the redactor. 
History is often written under prejudice, or under 
repression, or for a partizan purpose. There is 
such a thing as Anglomania. Now, Anglomania, 
if it had the opportunity, would warp all American 
history so as to secure the constant laudation of 
the English over the just claims of all other na- 
tions. I would not trust the man who turns up 
his trousers and carries an umbrella in New York 
on a clear day, for the sole reason that the Atlantic 
cable reports it is raining in London, to write 
American history, no matter what brain power he 
might have. You know how historians have been 
treated in the past. Louis XIV. withdrew a pen- 
sion from an historian of his day, because he made 
some adverse remark about taxation. Richelieu 
charged a certain French chronicler with treason 
and treated him as a traitor, because he told some 
distasteful truth about a king who had been dead 
for centuries. Certainly history written during 
such times needs to be rewritten. It is the God- 
given mission of the modern iconoclast to knock 
all such history into shivers. Besides this, how 
often are hindrances put in the way of the histo- 



THE HOLLANDERS. 115 

rian, and that by those from whom we would least 
expect hindrances ! Let me give you an example 
pertaining to our English friends who have so 
loudly claimed to be the direct and indirect authors 
of our American civilization. In 1841 John Ro- 
meyn Broadhead was sent to Europe by the State 
of New York to procure copies of documents relat- 
ing to our colonial history from the public offices 
of England, France, and Holland. He was well 
received and assisted in France and Holland ; but 
how in England ? Lord Palmerston replied to his 
application that " if he would designate the partic- 
ular paper he wished to see, it would be officially 
examined, and if no objection were found he could 
have a copy of it at the customary rates." Thus 
obstacles were put in his way for a year. It was 
only when a new ministry came into power that 
he was able to secure access to documents known 
to be stored away, but not sufficiently known to 
be numbered. The fees charged were exorbitant. 
In the interest of history and the science of his- 
tory, free access to all public documents should 
have been allowed him. Now, remember, Mr. 
Broadhead was not a private individual ; he was 
the representative of the Empire State of Amer- 
ica. Davies, the historian of Holland, went to the 
same source for historic light, but he was abso- 
lutely denied in his own land any access to histor- 
ical documents. He was compelled to issue his 



116 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

work in a limited form. These are instances in 
history-making relating to that nation which, for the 
most part, has furnished the men who have written 
American history — the men who have left out of 
American history almost in toto the influence of 
the Dutch in and on our national life. Honest and 
thinking men are rising up and are putting an in- 
terrogation-point against all such history ; and do 
you wonder? I hold that the iconoclast has a 
work just here in American history written under 
English influence and by English descendants. 

Our history should be rewritten, because we are 
constantly reaching and bringing to light new his- 
torical material. Let me give you a striking case. 
At the time I was born it was not even known 
where the New England Pilgrims originally came 
from. The writings of Bradford, the first governor 
of the Plymouth Colony, had been carried to Eng- 
land in I 776 by the British, and we were all in the 
dark. These writings have been recovered in my 
day, and hence our present knowledge. 

At least two things have worked against tiie 
Dutch in America and have kept them from their 
historic due. The first is this: the caricature of 
the Dutch by Washington Irving. The magic pen 
of Washington Irving, that prince and father of 
American literature, made the Dutch the victims 
of a caricature which captivated the fancy of the 
world. The history of the fictitious Diedrich 



THE HOLLANDERS. 117 

Knickerbocker is but a humorous romance. It is 
worse ; it is a bold travesty, and that according to 
Irving's own admission. It is a gross caricature. 
It lauds only Dutch courage for drink and Dutch 
valor in the use of the pipe. The only halo which it 
weaves for the brow of our Dutch fathers is the halo 
woven out of the cloudy wreath of tobacco smoke. 
Besotted with beer, nicotinized with tobacco, ill- 
natured, clownish, fit objects of ridicule — such 
are the Dutch fathers of the humorous Diedrich 
Knickerbocker ; and yet, many persons know only 
this travesty. This travesty has stood in the way 
of true and real history. 

The second thing which has worked against the 
Dutch in American history is this : the precedence 
which has been given to the Puritanism and hero- 
ism of New England. The English and their 
Yankee descendants have monopolized all that is 
good in American history. Their appropriation 
has been wholesale. The English have a genius 
for appropriation and assimilation. They have put 
their hands on the ends of the earth — Canada, Aus- 
traha, East India ; they have grasped all of these. 
In 1664 they appropriated New Amsterdam, and 
took it from the Dutch, and called it New York. 
This taking from others is an old trait of theirs. 
Go back as far as the Elizabethan period ; a recent 
writer shows that even back there, in the sphere 
of literature, they took from others and exhibited 



118 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

marvelous assimilative faculties. Shakespeare bor- 
rowed from every quarter not alone single scenes, 
but whole plots and plays. Hooker, in his " Ec- 
clesiastical Polity," follows out the train of thought 
worked out by Buchanan, the Scotchman. Milton, 
at a later date, takes from the Dutch poet, Vondel, 
the scheme for his " Paradise Lost " and " Samson 
Agonistes," with many of his happiest expressions. 
In no case is any acknowledgment made to the 
foreign authors thus devoured and used. Modern 
investigation alone has brought out the fact of 
these English appropriations. 

We all know the Yankee's proclivities for tall 
talk and self-appropriation and self-help. He ex- 
cels even his English father. The well-known 
dialogue between the old Englander and the New- 
Englander sets this forth. It is Yankee through 
and through. The New-Englander had just told 
of a wonderful swimming feat which he once per- 
formed ; he swam twenty miles at a stretch. The 
old Englander laughed at that feat as a mere trifle, 
and then told his story. His story was this : When 
he left Liverpool on the steamship, he looked be- 
hind and saw a man in the water swimming after 
the ship with the evident intention of following the 
ship across the ocean. Certain enough ; on the 
second day out, there was the man swimming 
leisurely along. He was there on the third day, 
and the fourth, and the fifth, and on the tenth 



THE HOLLANDERS. 119 

day he came up Boston harbor even with the ship. 
Nothing abashed, the New-Englander asked the 
old Englander if he would take his oath to that, 
and when he had taken the oath, he thanked him, 
and with the old-time spirit of English appropria- 
tion he said, " Stranger, I am a'mighty glad to 
have such a-credible witness as you to that swim- 
ming feat, for that fellow you saw and have told 
us about was me." 

An illustration in point of what I am setting 
forth is seen in the claims of the English historian, 
Edward A. Freeman. In his lectures on " The 
English People in their Three Homes " — in their 
home in old England, i.e., on the European conti- 
nent, the Netherlands, from which the English 
originally came ; in their home in middle England, 
i.e., the British Isles; and in their new home, i.e.. 
New England of America — he deliberately argues 
that New England is simply the fruitage of old 
England and middle England. Here are some 
sentences from these lectures as he delivered them 
to American audiences : " Wherever the English 
folk dwell there is England." " Your Constitution 
is really our constitution put into a formal written 
shape and then modified." " Your President is 
beyond all doubt the English king modified." 
George Washington George III. modified! God 
forbid! It seems to me that Mr. Freeman has a 
tremendous eye for seeing resemblances. He sim- 



120 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ply burlesques the word "modified," which he so 
often uses. Let him try American modification in 
England and see what a revolution it will create. 
Away goes the House of Lords. Away goes the 
distinction between the child born in the palace 
and the child born in the hovel. Away goes the 
unwritten constitution. Away goes the prime 
minister. Away goes the titled nobility. Away 
goes the throne. The American Republic is in 
no sense the English monarchy. The American 
Revolution did something far other than " modify." 
It cut us forever and completely loose from the old, 
and gave us institutions which were entirely new 
and grandly un-English. 

The time has come in the writing of American 
history when we must give credit to others besides 
the English, and when we must, for the sake of 
fairness and for the sake of historic fact, break up 
the English historical monopoly. It is time to say 
that there were Dutch Puritans. American history 
has been too largely written from the English 
standpoint. Let us divide honors all around and 
give all of our forefathers their share. This will 
change the order of things and will in many cases 
compel us to revise our judgments, but if this be 
fair it is also right and needed. The praise of the 
Pilgrims and Puritans has crystallized into public 
opinion. Poets and novelists have woven into 
their story brilliant fictions, and these captivate ; 



THE HOLLANDERS. 121 

they have almost the authority of history. The 
EngHsh Pilgrims and Puritans have had the good 
fortune to have the highest genius and eloquence 
and philosophic acumen, and have devoted them- 
selves to the exaltation of their mission and their 
deeds and their creations. The English Pilgrims 
and Puritans have absorbed public attention; they 
have gotten into the public schools of the nation, 
and thus into the hearts and brains of the Ameri- 
can boys and girls. The time has come when in 
fairness the Dutch Puritans must get there too. I 
do not mean to rob our English forefathers, but 
I do mean to be fair to our Dutch forefathers. I 
have already spoken the praises of the Pilgrim and 
the Puritan, and I will not withdraw what I have 
spoken ; but this is a Dutch night and the praises 
of the Dutch must be spoken. I will not go back 
on the New England farmer's shot fired at Concord 
and Lexington, which echoed around the world. 
It was a grand shot, and thus I characterize it when 
I walk over these battle-fields. I will not go back 
on that shot, but this I must claim and this I do 
claim, viz. : that shot was the heroism of the old 
Dutch republic reproducing itself in the new civil 
life of American freemen. 

How did the Hollanders help in the building up 
of America and American institutions? That is 
the question to-night. I have time to present only 
two points. 



122 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

I. By hewing and shaping and filling and in- 
spiring the EnglisJi Pilgrims and Puritans, who 
are boasted factors in American life. 

England was not the first to lead Europe. It 
was the Dutch republic that first led Europe ; it 
first taught what true liberty was. The entire war 
of Holland with Spain was a Puritan war. Three 
quarters of a century this war raged. In this war 
Holland permitted thousands of English soldiers 
to fight. English soldiers came into her army 
monarchists, and left it republicans, and went home 
to spread republican ideas. For two centuries and 
a quarter the territory which the hardy Hollanders 
took from the Haarlem Lake and the Zuyder Zee 
stood first in civilization. It commanded the mar- 
kets of the world, and the oceans of the world, and 
the commerce of the world, and the manufactures 
of the world, and the gold of the world ; it was the 
great intellectual and institutional storehouse of the 
world. These are undisputed historical facts. 

But our object now is to look especially at what 
Holland did for England, and especially that part 
of England which sent us the Pilgrims and the 
Puritans. It was the first to give the English- 
speaking people the Bible in their own tongue. 
The first complete English Bible in print was the 
work of Miles Coverdale, who was employed to 
make the translation by Jacob van Meteren, of 
Antwerp. The translation was from the Dutch 



THE HOLLANDERS. 12S 

and Latin, and was printed in Antwerp and sent 
across the channel by Van Meteren, to use his own 
words, " for the advancement of the religion of 
Christ in England." There was no country so 
saturated with Bible ideas as was Holland, and 
this fact accounts for the political energy of the 
Dutch. Under the persecution of Philip II. and 
the Duke of Alva one hundred thousand Holland- 
ers crossed the channel and made their home in 
the eastern and southern counties of England. 
What a power this must have been in England! 
These one hundred thousand came from a land of 
pubHc schools and universities. Each man brought 
his Bible, which he could read for himself and for 
his neighbor. They were not paupers seeking 
alms ; they were industrious, self-supporting men, 
scholars, bankers, manufacturers, merchants; all of 
them were freemen, refugees for freedom's sake and 
for conscience' sake. They were men, grand men 
and brave men, men constructed out of the very 
prodigality of nature ; they were massive in intel- 
lect and in soul. Never in all the history of the 
world was there such another missionary movement 
on such a magnificent scale. They taught England 
commerce, education, agriculture, banking, the 
trades, morals, republican politics, and, above all, 
the true religion. Their daily life was a sermon 
on Christian virtue and temperance and chastity. 
It was out of these counties into which the Dutch 



3 24 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

came that the University of Cambridge arose, that 
educational center of broad thought and Puritanism 
which gave America the first scholars and leaders 
of New England. Under the labors of these 
scholars of Holland the university was almost re- 
born. It was out of these counties that the English 
Commonwealth sprang, and that Cromwell sprang, 
and that Cromwell's army was mustered. Above 
all, it was out of these counties, impressed by Dutch 
ideas and principles and filled with Dutch blood 
by intermarriage, that the great English exodus to 
America came, the Puritan exodus which made 
New England what it has been. This is one of the 
ways Holland has been a builder of America. 

I need not tell you that it was from these 
counties that John Robinson and his congregation 
of Scrooby went to Holland. These were the 
American Pilgrims. These Pilgrims dwelt in Hol- 
land for twelve years, and became citizens of the 
United States of the Netherlands, and sent their 
children to the public schools of the republic, and 
used the secret ballot, and learned the doctrine of 
the rights of the individual man, and then came, 
filled with Hollandic and republican ideas, straight 
from the shores of Holland to Plymouth Rock. It 
was Holland with its republicanism that hewed and 
shaped and gave us those granite blocks which were 
swung into and solidified into the foundations of 
our nation, viz., the English Pilgrims and the 



THE HOLLANDERS. 125 

English Puritans. Said I not the truth when I 
said that the farmer's shot at Lexington and Con- 
cord was the heroic spirit of the Dutch repubHc 
finding a resurrection in the new civic hfe of New 
England heroes? 

2. The Hollanders helped in the building of the 
American Republic by the colony of the New Nether- 
lands which they established Jipon our shores, and 
by the influence which it exerted in sister colonies. 

What influence did Holland exert in other 
colonies, do you ask? 

There was the colony of Pennsylvania. It 
exerted a tremendous influence in the Republic. 
William Penn, the founder of that colony, was the 
son of a Dutch mother as well as of an English 
father. He preached in Holland and brought 
hundreds of his converts to his colony. He drafted 
the Pennsylvania code according to the laws of his 
mother's republic. 

There was the colony of Connecticut. Hollanders 
exerted a tremendous influence there. The Con- 
necticut Colony has been rightly called the minia- 
ture American Republic. Our fathers patterned 
the national institutions more after Connecticut 
than after any other existent colony. But who 
modeled Connecticut? Thomas Hooker, an Eng- 
lish refugee, direct from Holland. 

There was Rhode Island. Holland exerted a 
tremendous influence in Rhode Island. Roger 



126 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Williams was a Welshman full of Hollandic ideas. 
He was the man who taught Milton, the poet, the 
Dutch language. He was a Baptist. Now the 
English Baptists were the converts of the Holland 
Mennonites or Anabaptists, who believed in the 
separation of church and state ; this was the re- 
publican principle upon which Roger Williams built 
Rhode Island. 

But the work of Holland in America was more 
direct than anything we have yet noticed. She 
built up what is now the Empire State of the Union, 
the State of New York. She founded it by her 
own sons and daughters; she molded it; she gave 
it the very institutions which have continued to 
this day. On Manhattan Island she built the first 
free church and the first free school of America. 
She gave New York half a century of the Dutch 
republic simon-pure. Manhattan Island was as 
much a part of the Dutch republic as was Holland 
itself. Manhattan Island was hers not by con- 
quest, as Plymouth Rock with its surrounding 
region was the Pilgrims' ; it was hers by an out- 
and-out purchase. Holland purchased Manhattan 
Island from the Indians for the sum of twenty-four 
dollars. A sharp Dutch bargain, you say? No; 
it was all that it was worth. Put that money at 
interest and let it compound, and the money will 
be equal to the market value of Manhattan Island 
to-day. I have seen the figures. Money and real 



THE HOLLANDERS. 127 

estate must run close together, else we would have 
financial confusion. 

Two things the Dutch Colony which once reigned 
where we worship to-night preserved in their in- 
tegrity. These were freedom of worship, i.e., re- 
ligious toleration, and the political principle that 
where there is taxation there must be representa- 
tion, i.e., the consent of the governed. These two 
principles Peter Stuyvesant, the governor, once 
undertook to ignore. The people in the first in- 
stance appealed to the home republic, and the 
governor was rebuked and this proclamation was 
issued: "All men own their own consciences." 
The people in the second instance drew up a pub- 
lic and representative remonstrance, in which they 
declared that government should be administered 
according to the law of God, should respect indi- 
vidual rights, and should receive its power from the 
consent of the governed. This was in 1653. This 
was the first declaration of independence ever issued 
on the American continent. It was Bunker Hill, New 
York, one hundred and twenty- two years in ad- 
vance of Bunker Hill, Boston. 

Thus our debt to Holland opens before us. Our 
Constitution is written, not unwritten, as in Eng- 
land ; this we got from Holland. We have the 
system of the public record of deeds and mort- 
gages; this we got from Holland. We have the 
free-school system ; this we got from Holland. 



128 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

We have the doctrine that government gets its 
authority from the consent of the governed ; this 
we got from Holland. The separation of church 
and state is an American idea; this we got from 
Holland. Our motto is, " United we stand, divided 
we fall;" this we got from Holland; that was a 
motto fo the Dutch republic — " Unity makes 
might." We have among us the freedom of the 
press; this we got from Holland. We have the 
secret written ballot; this we got from Holland. 
We have reform in the laws concerning the rights 
of married women ; this we got from Holland. 
Above all, we have the principle that " all men 
are created equal"; this we got from Holland. 

We shall not read history rightly if we only look 
at Holland of to-day and judge Holland by the 
present ; the past was different from the present. 
The changes of two hundred and fifty years are 
■such that it is necessary for us to use language that 
seems extravagant if we would do the republic of 
Holland justice. Our civil fathers knew it. It was 
a dominant power in the day of the three historic 
ships, the Good Speed, the Half-moon, and the May- 
flower. It existed all through our colonial history, 
and it was a power our fathers felt when they wrote 
•our Declaration of Independence and when they 
framed our national Constitution. It was the 
training-school of our nation's founders. 

The Dutch republic is now dead ; it was crushed 



THE HOLLANDERS. 129 

by Napoleon, who tramped the earth with the iron 
heel of a cruel despot ; but before it died it safely 
handed the torch of liberty to the new Republic 
across the sea. The United States of America are 
in principle and in national life the United States 
of Holland amplified, refined, perpetuated. 

In closing my address to-night, I call upon you 
to stand by the civil institutions bequeathed to us 
by our civil fathers. Let me particularize just one 
— one which has been a mighty blessing to the 
Republic. I refer to our public school ; and I refer 
to it because to-day it is made the subject of 
special hostile attack. There are men in America 
who are striving to smite it into the dust. They 
are seeking to undermine it and to crowd it out by 
un-American substitutes. My fellow-men, the 
public school in itself is a little germinant American 
Republic keeping up true democratic equality. It 
is the nation's institution,' and not the institution 
of a church with a bias on the side of self, teaching 
sectarianism and planting the seed of dissension 
and future schism in the very cradle. It is the 
nation's institution, and not the institution of a 
class segregating our boys and girls according to 
the amount of money in the pocket-books of their 
fathers, and begetting a class feeling in our commu- 
nities. The American Republic owns the boys and 
girls born under its flag, and its public school is its 
one institution to fit them for citizenship. It fuses 



130 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

all classes and creeds, and makes the child in his 
ideas and feelings and sympathies and purposes, 
and in every fiber of his being, an American. 
Here the children are taught to sing the songs of 
the Republic, and are taught what our institutions 
cost, and are indoctrinated in the principles of 
Americanism. It is the great unifier of the difTer- 
ent nationalities pouring in upon our shores. It 
is our defense against all hierarchies, civil and ec- 
clesiastical, and against all deadly isms imported 
from foreign shores. It puts the American flag into 
the hands of our children, to be carried by them 
all through life. The man who strikes down this 
distinctively American institution, which has occu- 
pied the soil ever since the Hollanders planted it 
in New Amsterdam, should be treated as we treat 
the man who fires on the stars and stripes. 

I call upon you to-night to honor the civil fathers 
of America. Hold on to their intense trust in God 
and to their reverent spirit toward God. Honor 
God's church as they honored it. Kneel at the 
prayer altar which they erected to God. Read 
God's Word as they read it. Let Turner's paint- 
ing, " The Old Dutch Grandmother Reading her 
Bible," be translated into life in every American 
home. Make the lives of the children the glory 
of the fathers. Keep America intact as God's 
loom for the interweaving of all people into a re- 
public of God. Renew the Declaration of Indq- 



THE HOLLANDERS. 131 

pendence. Amend the Constitution; make it true 
to God ; refill it with the spirit of the fathers ; fit 
it to the times ; make it proclaim the present truth. 
Keep America true to herself, and thus keep her 
true to the world. The world needs America, the 
latest beautiful civil flower of the past. 

A noted traveler who has circled the world says : 
" At the bottom of the wail of every struggling 
people you find American aspirations. In Switzer- 
land I heard the news of the death of Garfield, and 
all the Alps seemed quivering in sympathy with 
our national bereavement. In Ceylon I heard of 
the death of Longfellow, and all the tropical forests 
seemed trembling in pain at our grief. In the 
Inland Sea of Japan I heard of the death of Emer- 
son, and all the sacred groves seemed uttering their 
sympathy with our loss. Wherever on earth I 
stood, I put my ear upon the heart of nations, and 
I have listened not to what the people are ready 
to say in public in the face of tyranny, but to what 
the people are saying at their firesides and in their 
secret thoughts; and this is what I have always 
heard: the echo of the prayer of our martyred 
Lincoln, that ' the government of the people, for 
the people, by the people, may not perish from 
the earth.' " 

The world to-day needs America, as America 
once needed Holland. 



V. 

THE SCOTCH. 



133 



V. 

THE SCOTCH.* 

The commemoration of the deeds of our civil 
fathers is a perpetual duty. There come to us 
exhilaration and inspiration and vitality of holy 
purpose from living with the heroes of God who 
have glorified the past by their loyalty to the right. 
Macaulay says, " No people who fail to take pride 
in the deeds of their ancestors will ever do any- 
thing in which their posterity can take pride." 
Especially is this true when their ancestors have 
stood in the front ranks of human progress and, 
Hke our ancestors, have fought and won the battles 
of the ages. 

Honoring ancestors should prove a large trade 
in the American commonwealth, and that because 
we are rich in ancestors. We can truthfully claim 
kinship to every line of human nobility that has 
done anything grand by way of sacrifice in the 
uplift of the world in these last centuries. The 

* Delivered in Baltimore, Md., before the Presbyterian Union 
of that city. 

137 



138 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

best of a score of the leading races of the earth 
focalize right here. And this is to our national 
advantage. A great people is stronger and more 
fertile from the variety of its component parts and 
from the friendly play of the electric currents 
which have their origin in the diversity that is held 
in friendship. 

I look upon our country as God's great loom for 
the interweaving of the peoples of the earth. The 
noble men and noble women from the different 
races of the Old World are the threads of silk and 
of silver and of gold, and the fabric woven is the 
American Republic, beautiful with its holy free- 
dom, its constitutional rights, and its magnificent 
and elevating institutions, both civil and religious. 
The fabric of our national civilization, which is dis- 
tinctively American, is complex, and the credit for 
its beauty and strength and value should be as 
manifold as its contributing constituents are mul- 
tifold. There should be honest recognition and 
praise given all around. Let the Pilgrim be praised 
where the Pilgrim should be praised ; let the Puri- 
tan be praised where the Puritan should be praised ; 
let the Hollander be praised where the Hollander 
should be praised ; and let the Scotch and their 
descendants be praised where the Scotch and their 
descendants should be praised. Let the highest 
type of manhood built into the construction of our 
civic personality be admired, no matter from what 



THE SCOTCH. 139 

race it has come. The only restriction I would 
lay down is this : choose only the best manhood 
to honor, because the type of manhood which you 
honor is the type of manhood which you will 
inevitably seek to perpetuate. Admire only the 
best and choicest threads in the fabric. Up to this 
point in our national history we have not been im- 
partial in our admiration of our ancestors. New 
England has created a monopoly here. The large- 
talking Yankee, true to his pedigree, has talked 
himself into a largeness out of all proportion with 
the facts. Hitherto he has written the history of 
the country, and he has so put himself into history 
that there has been little room there for others. 
He has not done justice to the Hollander ; he has 
not done justice to the Huguenot ; he has not 
done justice to the Scot. All of these were first- 
class believers in human liberty and not one whit 
behind either Pilgrim or Puritan in the sacrifices 
which they made for our Republic. The eyes of 
the public are being opened, and the result is there 
is an honest and a popular demand that American 
history be rewritten from alpha to omega, and that 
the uncredited heroes be enthroned in the midst 
of their lawful rewards, and that every omitted 
chapter be inserted in full. My fellow-men, 
American history has yet to be written. The 
Yankee has yet to hold fellowship on the historic 
page with the men of other races from whom he 



140 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REP^UBLIC. 

received his best ideas and who led him up to the 
alpine heights of republicanism in the colonial 
days. He must yet lift his hat with respect to 
both the Dutchman and the Scotchman. It is our 
duty to reach a full and an impartial view of our 
American nationality. 

To-night we are to speak of the Scotch and their 
descendants as makers of America. They were 
the first on American soil openly to advocate 
American independence. We wish to do for them 
what the famous poet and novehst, Sir Walter 
Scott, has done for the physical beauties of the 
landscape of Scotia, viz., make them known. Scott 
has not added one particle of beauty to a single 
sprig of heather; he has not put a single additional 
touch of color upon a single bluebell ; he has not 
created one added glint of light on his beloved 
lakes ; he has not changed a particle of the country 
concerning which he so beautifully wrote. He 
has simply looked at Mid-Lothian, Lomond, and 
the Trosachs with his own eyes, has seen for him- 
self the beauty and grandeur of nature's handiwork 
in Scotia, and has told in prose and poetry just 
what he has seen. What Scott has done for the 
physical country we must do for the noble actions 
of the Scotch, viz., take them in and tell them 
out. 

Where shall I begin ? With John Knox. And 
why begin with John Knox ? Because the Scotch- 



THE SCOTCH. 141 

Americans are the sons of his faith, just as, spirit- 
ually, Knox himself is the son of John Calvin. The 
political truth which the Scotch-Americans held 
and for which they fought in revolutionary times 
and in prerevolutionary times was not a mushroom 
growth of a single night; it was the oak of cen- 
turies. It was the result of the unwavering fidelity 
which for two full centuries held sacred the political 
tenets of John Knox, the apostle of liberty, who 
said to the haughty queen, " If princes exceed 
their bounds they may be resisted by force." In 
that magnificent sentiment, uttered with a magnifi- 
cent fearlessness, I hear the far-oflf drum-beat of 
the American Revolution. Froude, the greatest 
of modern English historians, declares of this bold 
utterance of John Knox, " It is the creed of re- 
publics in its first hard form." This utterance of 
John Knox became ingrained in the very being of 
all true Scotchmen, and they believed it and as- 
serted it and lived it. In our own age a son of 
Scottish faith has said, " Government of the peo- 
ple, by the people, for the people, shall never perish 
from the earth." This saying, received with uni- 
versal applause, has been lifted into a classic by 
the American people of the nineteenth century. 
But what is this saying? Only the utterance of 
John Knox grown large. 

I have referred to John Knox as a spiritual son 
of John Calvin. He went straight from Calvin's 



142 .UAA'EKS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

home in Geneva to Scotland when, at the call of 
his countrymen, he entered Scotland to inaugurate 
the glorious reformation which he carried to suc- 
cess. His theology was Calvinistic, and so has been 
the theology of his descendants. This gives me 
an opportunity to speak a passing word for Cal- 
vinism. I do not ask you to-day to read Calvin's 
" Institutes " or to study Calvin's commentaries, 
but I do ask you to read Calvin as he has written 
himself into history and then take the measure of 
Calvin. In history John Calvin wrote Swiss Prot- 
estantism, and French Huguenotism, and English 
Puritanism, and Scotch sturdiness of faith, and New 
England Pilgrimism. He put into human life a 
sense of reverence, and of liberty founded on rev- 
erence, and these will last in the world long after 
his "Institutes" and commentaries have become 
worm-eaten and have crumbled into dust. Now 
the point I wish to emphasize is this: Calvin has 
blessed America through John Knox. Listen to 
the voice of the great historians here. Buckle 
says, " Wherever it has gone in France, Switzer- 
land, Britain, America, the Calvinistic faith has 
shown itself the unfailing friend of constitutional 
liberty." D'Aubigne says, " Calvin was the founder 
of the greatest of republics : the oppressed who 
went to America were the sons of his faith." Mot- 
ley says, " Holland, England, America, owe their 
liberties to the Calvinists." Bancroft says, " He 



THE SCOTCH. 143 

that will not honor the memory and respect the 
influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of 
American independence. . . . The light of his 
genius shattered the mask of darkness which super- 
stition had held for centuries before the brow of 
religion." These are the voices of the authorities 
in history, and we can see how facts accord with 
their testimony to Calvinism. Calvinism exalts as 
its cardinal doctrine the absolute sovereignty of 
God. Let a man believe with all his heart the ab- 
solute sovereignty of God, let him believe that his 
first and last allegiance is to God as sovereign, and 
he will know no such thing as fear of the face of 
man, king or potentate or peasant. He will feel 
that in every battle for truth and liberty " one man 
with God is a majority," and that victory is sure. 
That was the fate of John Knox when he came 
from the presence of John Calvin and worked out 
the reformation of Scotland. He began his work 
with the cry, " O God, give me Scotland or I die ! " 
and God gave him Scotland and he lives. What 
was the reformation which he wrought? It con- 
sisted in this : He exterminated from Scotland the 
Roman Catholic hierarchy, that representative of 
monarchy, that natural enemy of republicanism, 
and he exterminated it root and branch. In its 
place he gave Scotland Presbyterianism pure and 
simple. He was the founder of the famous Scotch 
kirk. Lecky, the historian, says, "The Scotch 



144 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

kirk was by its constitution essentially republican. 
It was in this respect the very antipodes of the 
Anglican church and of the Galilean branch of the 
Catholic Church, both of which did all they could 
to consecrate despotism and strengthen its au- 
thority." Carlyle says, " A man's religion is the 
chief fact with regard to him." Knox gave Scotch- 
men their religion. He taught them to learn from 
the Bible their rights as Christians and as citi- 
zens. He taught them that in the New Testa- 
ment there is no sacerdotal class save that which 
includes all of the people : " Ye are a royal priest- 
hood!" He taught them from the Bible the 
principle of representation and the right of choice. 
That certainly is Americanism as we have it to-day. 
He put the Bible into the hands of the people and 
taught the right of private interpretation. He in- 
troduced schools for the people and gave them 
education. He established a system of schools. 
Thus he laid the foundation of future Scotland and 
built up the institutions which were destined to 
mold the character of the men about to cross the 
ocean and become the makers of America. This 
one thing is to be kept prominently in mind : John 
Knox worked largely for the church, and through 
the church, and by the church. All of his institu- 
tions centered in the kirk. In short, John Knox 
made and built up the church, and the church 
made and built up the people. Carlyle says, 



THE SCOTCH. 145 

" Knox gave Scotland a resurrection from the dead. 
Scotch literature and thought and industry, — James 
Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns 
(he who wrote ' A man's a man for a' that ') — I 
find the Reformation acting in the heart's core of 
every one of these persons. Without the Refor- 
mation they would not have been." But Carlyle 
was a Scotchman. A man who was not a Scotch- 
man says, " In proportion to their small numbers 
they are the most distinguished little people since 
the days of the Athenians, and the most educated 
people of the modern races. All the industrial arts 
are at home in Glasgow, and all the fine arts in 
Edinburgh, and as for literature, it is everywhere." 
The natural sequence of John Knox in Scotland 
is just what we see on the page of Scottish history : 
(i) The Solemn League and Covenant, literally 
signed with the blood of the best sons of Scotland, 
the Covenanters. The Covenanters were most 
potent in their influence during the period of the 
colonization of New England and when the insti- 
tutions of the colonies were taking shape. (2) The 
Sanquhar Declaration, signed by Richard Cameron 
and Donald Cargill, and the great revolution. 
(3) The notable movement which resulted, in our 
own day, in the Free Church of Scotland, which 
has given us the names of Chalmers and Candlish 
and Guthrie. All of these historic movements 
show the features of John Knox, in that they exalt 



146 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and declare the equality of man, liberty in religion, 
the value of the open Bible, the need of a sancti- 
fied Sabbath, the power of a pure church, and the 
rights of free speech, free press, free schools. 

The question before us now is. How did these 
men whom Knox made reach America? How did 
they come to cast in their lot with those who be- 
came the makers of America? At this point the 
history of the Scotch-Americans resembles some- 
what the history of the New England Pilgrims. 
The two histories are parallel. The New England 
Pilgrims came to America by way of Holland ; the 
Scotch-Americans came to America by way of the 
province of Ulster, Ireland. Only a small portion 
of the Scotch in the colonial times came to the col- 
onies directly from Scotland. 

Just here comes in the story of Ulster. In the 
early days of prelatic James I. the rebellion of two 
of the great nobles of the province in the north of 
Ireland furnished the king an excuse to confiscate 
their vast domains. To hold these domains and to 
populate them with men who could hold their own 
successfully against the rest of Catholic Ireland, 
James determined to found a colony of picked sub- 
jects. He offered special inducements to the Scotch 
to make Ulster their home. The inducements were 
such and the charter promised so favorable that 
large numbers responded. Of these James took 
his pick. This colony received its charter April 



THE SCOTCH. 147 

i6, 1605. The Scotch in their new home of Ulster 
were joined by many of God's noblemen, who were 
one with them in religious thinking and in a holy 
life, who came from the English Puritans and from 
the French Huguenots. This mixture modified 
and improved in some regard the Puritan Scotch 
stock. To-day this people are known by the name 
of Scotch- Irish. The name is a misnomer. It 
would lead us to believe that the Scotch of the 
colony of Ulster intermarried with the Irish, and 
that this people, therefore, is a people of mixed 
blood. But this is not the case. The name Scotch- 
Irish, which has its origin in purely geographical 
reasons, is ethnologically incorrect. The Ulster 
people to this day are Scotch through and through 
and out and out. There is no intermarriage ; there 
is no union of the Scotch and the Irish races. The 
name Scotch-Irish is not used in the Emerald Isle, 
and in the interest of historical correctness I argue 
that it should not be used anywhere. In the 
Emerald Isle, by Irish and Scotch alike, these 
people are called Ulstermen, and that is their 
name. 

I do not need to tell you what a country these 
colonists of 1605 made out of Ulster and the sur- 
rounding territory. They took with them all that 
John Knox gave them, and the result was prosper- 
ity on all lines. But the colonists were not allowed 
to pursue the even tenor of their way. They were 



148 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

oppressed, just as the American colonists were, 
by prelatic. Episcopalian England. First, England, 
by the passage of oppressive measures, took from 
Ulster its woolen trade. This was like a stroke of 
paralysis. It caused the first great exodus of the 
Scotch colonists to America. A second and a 
larger exodus was caused by the scandalous ad- 
vancement of the rents of the farms and by a tax- 
ation on the improvements caused by the industry 
of the people. The first outrage made an attack 
on commerce and manufacture ; the second outrage 
was an attack on the agriculture of the colony. For 
fifty long years, from 1720 to 1770, the people, 
abused and then ejected from their farms and 
homesteads, which they and their fathers had made 
what they were, poured in streams of twelve thou- 
sand a year into America. So great was the 
inpour that when we come to the times of the 
American Revolution the Scotch formed almost, 
if not altogether, one third of the entire population 
of the American colonies. 

And where did they go in America? They 
formed no colonies of their own. Where did they 
go? 

Some of them went to New England and settled 
in Boston and in Worcester, and some threaded 
their way up into Maine and New Hampshire 
and Vermont. Twenty thousand settled along the 
Atlantic coast from the Charles River up to the 



THE SCOTCH. 149 

Kennebec. Froude holds that in Boston it was 
they who gave the name to Bunker Hill. There 
are Scotch Covenanter churches to-day in Maine 
and Vermont and Massachusetts, and there are 
Presbyterian churches in New Hampshire. In 1754 
the Presbyterian congregation of Londonderry, 
N. H., numbered over seven hundred communi- 
cants. Although comparatively but a few of the 
vast Scotch exodus settled in New England, yet 
those who did have made their record and have 
told on American life. They took with them into 
New England the things John Knox gave them : 
the kirk, and the school, and the civil creed of equal 
rights, and the sanctified Sabbath, and the inherent 
dignity of man. 

It was from the New England Scotch that 
George Washington got Henry Knox, a member 
of his cabinet, and the first Secretary of War in the 
American Republic. When the Revolution broke 
out it was the Scotch who fought the battle of Ben- 
nington. General Stark and his " Green Mountain 
boys" were Scotch. The Scotch of Maine gave to 
the country Matthew Thornton, one of the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence. In latter days 
the New England Scotch gave to journalism Hor- 
ace Greeley, the father of modern journalism, and 
to science Professor Asa Gray, one of Harvard's 
leading professors. 

But the greater part of the enormous Scotch 



150 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

exodus poured into the Middle and the Southern 
colonies. They literally took possession of Penn- 
sylvania. Philadelphia, with its Independence Hall, 
was their city, just as Boston, with its Faneuil Hall, 
was the city of the Puritans. They hold Philadelphia 
to this day. It was to Pennsylvania the Rev, Fran- 
cis Makemie came, the first Presbyterian minister in 
America of whose history we have any knowledge. 
He was the man who was imprisoned in New York 
for preaching in his independent way, and he was 
the man who formed the first American presbytery. 
We find the Scotch also in New Jersey. A large 
company of them came to New Jersey, we are told, 
under the prompting of William Penn. As New 
Jersey was one of the leading battle-fields of the 
Revolution, the Scotch, who had become very 
strong there, were among Washington's chief sup- 
porters. New Jersey gave to the army the Rev. 
James Caldwell, the chaplain of the First Brigade, 
whose history is given in full in the " Life and 
Letters of Elias Boudinot." He was more than 
chaplain ; he was at one time also the assistant 
commissary-general. Washington esteemed his 
service as invaluable. He was well-nigh ubiquitous. 
The British burned down his manse and murdered 
his wife before the eyes of his children, and they 
tried also to burn the children in the flames of the 
manse. His children were saved only by a hair- 
breadth escape. Lafayette took one of his mother- 



THE SCOTCH. 151 

less boys and adopted him and gave him the love 
and opportunity of his princely home. George 
Washington subscribed twenty-five guineas out of 
his own private funds for the support of the other 
children. Mr. Caldwell fell by the hand of an 
assassin. On one occasion it is told of him that, 
seeing one of the companies slacking their fire for 
want of wadding, he rushed into the Presbyterian 
church near by, and gathering an armful of Watts's 
hymn-books he distributed them along the line, 
with the order, " Now put Watts into them, boys." 
With a cheer the soldiers rammed the charges 
home and gave the British Watts with a will. It 
was the New Jersey Scotch who founded the fa- 
mous Presbyterian university, Princeton College, 
the college that can outkick anything on the con- 
tinent, and that up to date. 

Having located at first on the western and 
southern borders of the old colonies, the Scotch 
naturally pressed their way west and south. While 
they founded no colonies, they did in the course 
of time found new States. They poured their 
thousands down into the Carolinas, North and 
South. They made the States of Kentucky and 
Tennessee and Alabama. They poured also into 
Virginia until they out-influenced there the 
haughty Cavalier. They took possession of the 
Mississippi valley and brought it into the Republic. 
Ohio, too, felt their influence. They became so 



152 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

strong in our own Empire State of New York that 
even our first governor, Governor Clinton, the man 
who has given his name to the principal avenue of 
Brooklyn, was a scion of that race. 

I imagine some son of the Scot saying, just here, 
" How I wish my ancestors had massed themselves 
together as did the Puritans, and had formed a 
colony of their own ! Then they could have struck 
with a trip-hammer on the anvil of time the ele- 
ments making this nation. They could have made 
a name for themselves in American history like 
that of Massachusetts." This wish is a mistake. 
No matter about the name in history. The name 
is coming, for the facts of early days, which are 
being resurrected and glorified by modern histor- 
ical research, will build up the Scotch name and 
set it in a noonday splendor before the universe. 
The Scotch elements were too strong and too good 
to be massed ; they were of the kind fitted to be 
scattered as a leavening influence through the land 
and among the diverse peoples of the land. Thus 
scattered as they were, they worked more mightily 
for American liberty than they could have worked 
if they had been solidified into a single colony. 
Here allow me to illustrate and give concrete cases. 
Being Presbyterian in faith, they formed a general 
synod, which met once a year. Through this syn- 
od they worked powerfully for American liberty. 
They were the sons of John Knox, and, like Knox, 



THE SCOTCH. 153 

they used the church in the cause of freedom. In 
the General Synod there were delegates from all 
the colonies, and they formed a union of thought 
and purpose and plan. Thus the Scotch demon- 
strated to America that what was possible in re- 
ligious affairs was possible in civil affairs, viz., a 
union of all parts of the land, and a union by rep- 
resentation — a federal union. 

The Scotch General Synod was a model of the 
coming Colonial Congress. It made it possible. 
It suggested it. For fifty years this synod was the 
most powerful and compact religious organization 
in the country. The men in the synod, like the 
Scotch from Ulster, were men of the very highest 
type. The ministers were men educated at Glas- 
gow and Edinburgh and Dublin and Harvard 
universities. They discussed all questions that 
pertained to the interest of the country, and sent 
their delegates home to all the colonies to spread 
their advanced principles concerning their rights 
and duties. 

See the results of this. Four years before the 
battle of Lexington the Presbyterians of North 
Carolina resisted the oppression of the British 
crown as unjust. The governor of the colony 
treated them as outlaws, and sent an army against 
them and shot them down, and took captive and 
hung thirty of them. This was the first blood of 
the Revolution. It is known in history as the War 



154 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of the Regulators. Bancroft says of it, " The blood 
of the first rebels against British oppression was 
first shed among the settlers on the branches of 
the Cape Fear River." This was May i6, 1771. 

See the results of this. One year before the 
Philadelphia Declaration of Independence the Pres- 
byterians of Mecklenburg, N. C, met together and 
publicly issued their declaration of independence 
from the rule of Britain. Here is one sentence 
from that declaration: "We hereby absolve our- 
selves from all allegiance to the British crown ; we 
hereby declare ourselves a free and independent 
people." The men who issued this Mecklenburg 
declaration were the men on the walls of whose 
homes hung the National Covenant of Scotland, 
which many of their ancestors had signed. Thus 
you see that the famous and historic covenant of 
Greyfriars Churchyard formed the rugged and 
solemn background of American liberties. " It 
can be said, without fear of challenge, that Scotch 
blood flows through every principle in the Decla- 
ration of Independence, which forms the founda- 
tion of American freedom." 

Bancroft says, in writing of the Mecklenburg 
declaration, which antedated the Philadelphia 
Declaration one whole year, " The first public 
voice for dissolving all connection with Great Brit- 
ain came not from the Puritans of New England, 
nor from the Dutch of New York, nor from the 



THE SCOTCH. 155 

planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch Presby- 
terians." 

Wallace Bruce, a man with a double Scotch 
name and a double Scotch nature, our honored 
consul to Scotland, puts Bancroft's eulogy into 
verse, and in these fitting words honors the event 
of Mecklenburg: 

" Manhattan and Plymouth and Jamestown 

Can boast of their heritage true, 
But Mecklenburg's fame is immortal 

When we number the stars in the blue ; 
The Scotch-Irish Puritan Fathers 

First drafted the words of the free, 
And the speech of Virginia's Henry 

Is the crown of our liberty's plea." 

In 1775 the General Presbyterian Synod^ meet- 
ing in Philadelphia side by side with the Colonial 
Congress, issued a pastoral letter calling on the 
people to defend their rights against British usur- 
pation. This letter was a mighty power with the 
people and with Congress. You see here the power 
of the Presbyterian Church and how aggressive it 
was. It was ready in advance for July 4, 1776, 
and so were all its people scattered through all the 
colonies. When that day came it was Thomas 
Jefferson, a scion of the Scotch race, according to 
the record of the Scotch-Irish Congress, who was 
the author of the Declaration of Independence. 
Professor McCloskie, of Princeton, says the Decla- 



156 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ration of Independence, as we have it now, is in 
the handwriting of the son of Scotland ; it was first 
printed by another Scotchman, and a third Scotch- 
man, Captain Nixon, was the first to read it pub- 
Hcly to the people. 

It is in place just at this point to speak of two 
men whose names will always be connected with 
the American Declaration of Independence and 
with the great Revolution. The first is the name 
of the man who first sounded the tocsin of war 
in that great sentence of his, " Give me liberty 
or give me death," and made the tocsin reverber- 
ate from mountain to mountain and from lake to 
lake until the thirteen colonies heard the echo 
and resolved to be freemen or die. I refer to Pat- 
rick Henry, of Virginia, whose mother was a Pres- 
byterian. Of him Webster, speaking to Jefferson, 
says, " He was far before us all in maintaining the 
spirit of the Revolution." 

The second is the name of that Presbyterian 
minister whose voice it was that brought the Con- 
gress finally and irrevocably to sign the great in- 
strument, the Declaration. I refer to the venerable 
Dr. Witherspoon, President of Princeton College, 
who was at the time a member of the Continental 
Congress. We are told that the Congress was 
hesitating. The country was looking on. Three 
million hearts were violently throbbing in intense 
anxiety, waiting for the old bell on Independence 



THE SCOTCH. 157 

Hall to ring. " It was an hour that marked the 
grandest epoch in human history." What a scene 
was there ! On the table in the presence of that 
able body of statesmen lay the charter of human 
freedom in clear-cut utterances, flinging defiance 
in the face of oppression. It was an hour in which 
strong men trembled. There was a painful silence. 
In the midst of that silence Dr. Witherspoon, a 
lineal descendant of John Knox, rose and uttered 
these thrilling words : " To hesitate at this moment 
is to consent to our own slavery. That notable 
instrument upon your table, which insures immor- 
tality to its author, should be subscribed this very 
morning by every pen in this house. He that will 
not respond to its accent and strain every nerve to 
carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name 
of freeman. Whatever I have of property, of rep- 
utation, is staked on the issue of this contest, and 
although these gray hairs must soon descend into 
the sepulcher, I would infinitely rather that they 
descend hither by the hand of the executioner 
than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my 
country." That was the voice of John Knox in 
Independence Hall. And that voice prevailed. The 
Declaration was signed, the liberty bell of Inde- 
pendence Hall rang out, and the foundation of the 
American government was securely laid. Fourteen 
of the sons of Scotland signed this Declaration. 
From the signing of the Declaration of Inde- 



158 MAKERS OF THE AMERICA lY REPUBLIC. 

pendence American history grandly enlarges, and 
the sons of the Scotch race are seen in nearly 
every high place. Their generals led in the great 
battles of the Revolution : General Wayne at Stony 
Point, and General Campbell at Kings Mountain, 
and General Montgomery at Quebec. When the 
great American Constitution was framed their 
wisdom prevailed there. Madison is claimed by 
more than one member of the late Scotch-Irish 
Congress as a scion of this race. He is known as 
the father of the American Constitution. Lincoln 
also, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, 
is claimed, and his lineage is traced back to the 
Scotch who settled in Kentucky. Seven gover- 
nors out of the thirteen original States were Scotch. 
Then come their Presidents of the United States, 
Jefferson, Jackson, Monroe, James Knox Polk, 
Madison, Taylor, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, 
Grant, Hayes, Arthur, Harrison, and Cleveland. 

My friends, as I give the history of this magnifi- 
cent Scotch race in its relation to American life, 
I am heartily glad that I have the good fortune to 
have the Scotch for my theme to-night, and not 
the Pilgrims, and not the Puritans, and not the 
Hollanders ; for when the Scotch have claimed the 
first battle for our liberty ; and the first blood shed ; 
and the first declaration of independence publicly 
issued ; and the privilege of naming Bunker Hill ; 
and Davy Crockett, the most picturesque of 



THE SCOTCH. 159 

American characters, the wizard of the woods ; 
and Patrick Henry, the resistless orator of the 
Revolution; and the peerless Poe, the illustrious 
poet; and Commodore Perry, the illustrious naval 
officer; and Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration 
of Independence ; and Witherspoon, whose voice 
charmed America into accepting it • and Madison, 
the father of the American Constitution, which 
Gladstone pronounces the greatest instrument ever 
penned in a given time; and Abraham Lincoln, 
with his Emancipation Proclamation, America's 
greatest glory ; and Ulysses S. Grant, the man who 
carried the Civil War to its grand and proper close ; 
and Robert Fulton, the father of steamboat navi- 
gation, which has so wonderfully enlarged com- 
merce; and the phenomenal Morse, who with his 
telegraph has linked all parts of the world in in- 
stantaneous touch, and helped on the brotherhood 
of man ; and McCormick, the inventor of the 
American reaper, which has multiplied indefinitely 
the forces of American agriculture ; and Andrew 
Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812; and Win- 
field Scott, the hero of the Mexican War — when 
the Scotch have claimed all these great men and 
all these noble things, what is left for the other 
makers of America to claim and exult over? 

I wish to speak a brief word relative to some of 
the striking and racial characteristics of the Scotch — 
characteristics which have made them what they are. 



ICO M.IA'EA'S OF THE AMERICAN' REPUBLIC. 

I do not know that I can do better than simply 
name these traits and ilkistrate each by relating a 
pertinent anecdote. I notice first that the Scotch 
are : 

1. Pi'ecmincntly trutJifiil. 

They are truthful even to the point of blunt- 
ness. When I was a boy this story was told of 
Dr. Blank, a Scotch clergyman of Pittsburg, and it 
illustrates my point. The doctor had just a touch 
of vanity in his nature, and when a certain college 
gave him a D.D. his vanity was not in the least 
crushed. Indeed, it led him at once to plan a trip 
home, that his friends in the old country might 
feast their eyes on a doctor of divinity. Once in 
Scotland, he called upon his old pastor, who knew 
John's fondness for John. But he got no flattery 
from the old pastor. He was too truthful to flatter. 
He greeted the new-comer: " Well, well, John, I 
hear they have made you a doctor of divinity?" 
The new D.D. replied, "Yes, they persisted in 
giving me the title, although I was the last man in 
the world to deserve it." The old man, detecting 
the vanity in the tones of the voice, replied in his 
blunt way, "Yes, yes; that's just what I thought 
myself, John, when I heard it." 

2. The Scotch are men of principle, and largely 
given to protest. 

A Scotchman is a natural nonconformist. He 
loves to protest against things and institutions and 



THE SCOTCH. 161 

customs. He must protest or die, but die is the 
very last thing that a Scotchman does on earth. 
That he may find an opportunity to protest he is 
always in search of some principle to take hold of 
and advocate ; he finds a principle in everything. 
He will split hairs and then imagine that the points 
which he has made are every one of them princi- 
ples, and he will die for them before he will give 
them up. He can even, if need be, convert pre- 
judices into principles and thus transfigure them. 
Let me illustrate how the Scotchman reads prin- 
ciple into everything and in everything acts on 
principle. 

Probably you have heard of the old saying that 
"a Scotchman never shuts the door after him." 
That was true in olden times. He knows that a 
door will shut ; he knows what the latch is for ; he 
knows what good breeding is ; he knows that other 
people shut the door after them. He is not acting 
from ignorance ; he leaves the door open on prin- 
ciple. He has argued the whole question out to 
his own satisfaction, and logically he feels that he 
could not conscientiously shut the door. If you 
wish you may shut it ; he will not criticize you ; 
that is a matter for your own conscience ; but he 
cannot. Raillery cannot compel him, neither can 
force. He has argued the question out. He has 
canvassed the arguments in favor of shutting and 
the arguments in favor of leaving the door open, 



162 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and he has balanced the two, and the balance is 
on the side of not shutting, and that makes it a 
principle with him. In favor of shutting the door 
there is : 

1, A cold wind may blow into the room. But 
this is not probable, for those within would shut 
the door and protect themselves. 

2. By shutting the door you will keep people 
on the outside from hearing the conversation car- 
ried on within. But people should not talk about 
things or say things they would not want others 
to hear or repeat. 

These are the only arguments he can think of 
for shutting the door. There are more arguments 
in favor of leaving it open: 

1. If the door slam in shutting it would be ex- 
ceeding unpleasant, and would suggest the idea 
that you were in a passion. 

2. If it did not slam it might make a creaking 
noise. 

3. Suppose that it makes no noise at all, the 
impression is conveyed that you are going away 
not to return, while you have no such intention. 
You must not give false impressions. 

4. There are chances that when you come back 
you will make a noise in opening the door, which 
is an interruption to the conversation. That is bad 
manners. 

5. By not shutting the door you give the parties 



.HE SCOTCH. 103 

remaining behind the option of shutting it or not, 
according as it may please their own fancy. This 
disposition to please is an amiable disposition and 
should be cultivated. 

These are some of the reasons which determined 
the Scotchman of old not to shut the door, and he 
found a principle in every one of them. This looks 
like a burlesque, but, after ail, it is infinitely better 
to be a man of principle than to be a man of no 
principle. A man who will put principle into a 
little thing like " not shutting the door," when he 
comes to deal with the eternal verities, when he 
comes to stand face to face with gigantic wrong 
and with political tyranny and with unholy op- 
pression, is there for all he is worth ; the whole 
man is there ; and when a whole Scotchman is 
there, out into the open air is flung a Mecklenburg 
declaration of independence, and up in the highest 
court of the nation you have a Patrick Henry ut- 
tering an oration so full of conviction that it ushers 
in the American Revolution. 

3. The Scotchman has as a trait the element of 
persistence. 

Upon his drumhead he never beats a retreat. 
It is Hberty or death. This story illustrates how a 
Scotchman will hold on and follow what he consid- 
ers to be his one line of duty. It is told of a clergy- 
man in the days when Knox was battling against 
the Roman hierarchy. His congrega.tion brought 



164 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

a charge against him before the presbytery that he 
never could preach a sermon without breaking a 
lance with the pope — i.e., his sermons were all the 
same thing: pope in the exordium, pope in the 
body of the sermon, and pope in the peroration or 
conclusion. Thus it was fifty-two Sabbaths of the 
year. His preaching grew monotonous and the 
people grew weary. The presbytery said, "We 
will try him : we will give him a text to preach 
from, and we shall hear his sermon, and we shall 
see if your charge be true — that it is popery and 
pope no matter what text he takes." They gave 
him for a text these three proper names : "Adam, 
Seth, Enos." When the presbytery met there was 
a great congregation there, and the minister felt 
that they needed sound doctrine and timely warn- 
ing. He saw a great opportunity. Solemnly he 
took his place in the pulpit and announced his 
text, " Adam, Seth, Enos," and this was his first 
sentence : " My dear brethren, these men lived in 
a day when there was no pope nor popery, and 
consequently they had not to contend against the 
following evils," and he enumerated in full and 
without waste of time all the evils of Romanism. 

You smile at that man, but I tell you that we 
need just such a son of John Knox at this very 
moment in America. The Roman hierarchy is in 
our midst insidiously at work trying to weaken and 
to defeat the object of one of our noblest Ameri- 



THE SCOTCH. 165 

can institutions, the free public schools, manned, 
conducted, and supported by the state. It is these 
schools of ours, supported and conducted by the 
state, that unify the children of all classes and of 
all nationalities, and that take out of the cradle and 
out of childhood all sectarian prejudices and reli- 
gious hatred and strife, and make all from the very 
start of life American through and through. This 
means a solid, intelligent American future. Rome 
has stepped upon the scene and has made a public 
demand that our public-school funds shall be di- 
vided ; that is, that part of the taxes raised from 
the people shall be given to the Roman Church to 
be used for sectarian purposes. The Roman Church 
is pitted against the American state, and the issue 
is fairly on. We need a stalwart son of John Knox 
who knows the hierarchy through and through to 
tell Rome through Mr. Satolli that the American 
people mean to educate their own citizens, and that 
they are going to keep the schools of the Republic 
just as their fathers founded them. Sons of John 
Knox, tell that to Rome not only fifty- two Sab- 
baths every year, but tell that to Rome every day 
the whole year round. 

I have been speaking to you of your duty of 
protest against the machinations of a corrupt 
church ; let me now in closing say one word to 
you concerning your duty to the pure evangelical 
Christian church. My word grows out of this 



166 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

history of the freemen of Scotland as it touches 
American national life. John Knox, who gave 
Scotland its national power and character, was in 
loyal relation with the true church of Jesus Christ. 
Through the church of pure doctrine and equal 
representation, the church which honored the Sab- 
bath and the open Bible and the rights of the in- 
dividual man, he worked his great work ; that is, 
through the church in which every one had the 
liberty of private judgment he molded public sen- 
timent, and by the fearless and free discussion of 
the truth in this church he freed man's mind from 
superstition and welded his countrymen together 
to act as one man against the usurpations of op- 
pression, civil and ecclesiastical. He has taught 
us that a pure, holy, untrammeled, independent 
church is a mighty safeguard of the liberties and 
rights of a people; that it means the suppression 
of all hurtful evil and vice and tyranny. It is the 
enlightener of the nation and its educator in the 
holy principles and moralities which perpetuate 
national liberty and life. In the light of his teach- 
ings let us learn our duty of loyalty just here. 
There is no way in which we can so bless our 
country as by giving it a pure, free-thoughted, 
Bible-loving church of Jesus Christ. Such a church 
is a power which will make citizens of brain and 
character and holy devotion to the rights of man- 
kind. Such a church will be a power on any 



THE SCOTCH. 167 

question when it asserts itself on the right side. 
It can send its protest through the land like a 
thunderbolt. It can lead. Church of John Knox 
rooted to-day in American soil, I greet you as 
such a power, and assure you that you have still 
a patriotic mission in this Republic which you have 
helped to build. You are equipped to-day for 
work as you have never before been equipped ; en- 
ter that work with hope and consecration. Guard 
the liberties which you have purchased with your 
blood. Guard the institutions which incarnate the 
best thought and life of the American fathers. 

You remember what Angelo said to one of his 
pupils, Donatello, who asked him to come and 
look at his figure of St. George on the outside 
of a church at Florence. " The great sculptor 
looked at it with admiration and surprise. Every 
limb was perfect, every outline complete, the face 
lighted with almost human intelligence, the brow 
uplifted, and the foot forward as if it would step 
into life. As Donatello waited for Angelo's deci- 
sion the great sculptor looked at the statue, slowly 
lifted his hand, and said, 'Now march.'" That 
was the grandest possible encomium he could 
give to the figure of St. George in marble. That 
is God's word to the church of John Knox in 
America to-day : "I have given thee opportunity ; 
I have given thee royal men ; I have given thee 
freedom of thought ; I have given thee knowledge ; 



168 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

I have given thee numbers ; I have given thee My 
day and My Book ; I have given thee the inspiring 
promises. Now inarch. Battle for Me ; honor Me ; 
keep My day holy ; keep My truth uncorrupted ; 
and, above all, guard and serve My nation, which 
I have refined by the fires of conflict and revolu- 
tion. Lead America to higher and better things. 
Make it the refuge of the oppressed. Make it the 
land of Beulah — a land married unto the Lord." 



VI. 

THE HUGUENOTS. 



169 



VI. 

THE HUGUENOTS.* 

The chief object of a service such as this is to 
enlighten and broaden and deepen American pa- 
triotism, to secure a proper valuation of our Re- 
pubHc with its popular institutions, and to exhibit 
the overrule and supremacy of God in human 
history. There is no better wsLy of doing this than 
by setting forth and analyzing the forces which 
worked in the founding and upbuilding of our 
commonwealth. The hand of God was at work 
for long centuries, shaping events and raising up 
men and evolving great principles and incarnating 
the truth of civil and religious Hberty, that in the 
fullness of time there might be the rise and estab- 
lishment of the American Republic in the New 
World. 

If there had been no God in history there would 

* Delivered before the Presbyterian Ministerial Association, 
New York City. 

173 



174 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

have been no American Republic. God made the 
Pilgrims and guided the Mayflozver and founded 
the Plymouth Rock Colony. God made the Ptiri- 
tans and gave being to the Massachusetts Bay 
settlement. God made the Hollanders and planted 
the New Netherlands at the mouth of the Hudson 
and laid the foundations of New Amsterdam. God 
made the Scotch, and the Scotch made the church 
of John Knox, and the church of John Knox made 
the province of Ulster, and the province of Ulster 
gave America one third of its colonial population 
which struck for independence. God made the 
Huguenots, who brought to America their Bible 
and their love of liberty and their heroic conscience, 
which could sacrifice every earthly good before it 
could prove false to God's cause and the Hugue- 
nots' own best self. All these were makers of 
America, but you cannot think of them divorced 
from God, because they were not divorced from 
God. These men were the national fathers of the 
Republic, and they were all God-made men. They 
sought God's guidance in their private life, their 
social life, their business life, their church life, their 
civil life. God went before them, and the invisible 
camps of God were all around their camps when 
they pushed their campaign for principle. Napo- 
leon said, " God is always on the side of the hea- 
viest battaHons ;" but American history shows that 
that is not true. If that were always true our civil 



THE HUGUENOTS. 175 

fathers would have gone down before the guns of 
Britain. 

When the dock of time struck 1776 the hour 
had come when God wanted the American Repub- 
lic as a part of his world-plan. He did not bring 
it into existence as the ultimatum of civil progress, 
but only as the instrumentality for introducing 
greater things all around the globe. America under 
God exists for national progress, but America exists 
also for more than that : it exists for cosmopolitan 
progress. God is using it as His object-lesson to 
teach mankind the value of freedom of thought, 
the potentiality of popular education, and the 
absurdity of kingcraft and priestcraft. He is using 
it to create a rising tide of republicanism which 
shall roll in glory over every nation of the earth. 
The influence of the American Republic is at work 
to-day in Spain with the Castelars, and in Italy with 
the Cavours, and in England with the Gladstones. 
It turned the empire of Brazil into a republic with- 
out the shedding of a drop of blood. De Tocque- 
ville predicted that " the growth of great cities 
would ruin America unless these cities were kept 
in order by a standing army." New York answers 
De Tocqueville. She sends him this message : " All 
the standing army which the greatest republican 
city of America needs is the people, armed with 
a free ballot and led by a courageous preacher of 
righteousness." Lord Beaconsfield was accus- 



176 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

tomed to lift up his jeweled finger and point across 
the Atlantic and affirm, " No American city of 
any commanding size is well governed under uni- 
versal suffrage, or ever will be." Brooklyn at the 
present hour is an answer to the scorn of Bea- 
consfield's jeweled finger. Lord Macaulay wrote, 
" As for America, I appeal to the twentieth cen- 
tury. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize 
the reins of government with a strong hand, or 
your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and 
laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century 
as the Roman empire was in the fifth century, with 
this difference : that the Huns and Vandals who 
ravaged Rome came from without her borders, 
while your Huns and Vandals will be engendered 
within your own country and by your own insti- 
tutions." The answer to Lord Macaulay is the 
American Republic on the eve of the twentieth 
century still holding its own, and stronger than 
ever, and on a perpetual lookout for all such Huns 
and Vandals. A Forefathers' service such as this 
gives us an opportunity of pointing to the glad fact 
that our nation is reversing the black prophecies 
of pessimists and realizing the predictions of the 
optimists of the ages. More than this, such a ser- 
vice enables us to place before our thought that 
which is the bed-rock upon which rest the corner- 
stone and the upholding pillars of our Republic ; 
to find out also what the corner-stone is and what 



THE HUGUENOTS. 177 

the pillars are. It gives us an opportunity to find 
out where the nineteenth century came from, and 
to discover the foes of republicanism, that we may 
be able to recognize them whenever they reappear 
in our midst. It brings to light the battles which 
had to be fought before we could be, and also 
the victories which were essential to our existence. 
The principles and the men that made us in the 
beginning are alone the type of principles and the 
type of men that can perpetuate us and keep us in 
triumph. As we canvass these to-night let us re- 
solve to lock hands with them forever. 

A service such as this exalts before us the value 
of the existence of patriotic orders in our broad 
land. Patriotic orders are always in order in a 
land where there is such a constant influx of new 
and foreign elements. They are of value to edu- 
cate and to protect and to feed the patriotic spirit. 
If they exist in advance of foes they will prevent 
the rise of foes, and that is a grand work. If they 
exist alongside of designing foes they will check- 
mate them and save our reigning principles and 
institutions. Look out for the man who talks 
against patriotic orders; he is either seeking a 
cheap reputation for broad-mindedness or he is 
cloaking some deadly treason. What has genuine 
patriotism to fear from patriotic orders? The 
question is its own answer. Instead of putting 
your interrogation-point opposite patriotic orders, 



178 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

put your interrogation-point opposite the man who 
questions the right of such orders to exist. 

To-night, speaking as a Christian minister, I am 
required to look at American history from a reli- 
gious standpoint ; to mark the play and power of 
large-thoughted religion in the conception and 
construction of our national life. 

In the making of America the element of re- 
ligion was by far the largest element at work, and 
no one could give American history in its com- 
pleteness, from rostrum or platform or professor's 
chair or pulpit, and leave out the play and power 
of religion. What religion was it that had such 
a large play and power in our early history? I 
answer in a single word : Protestantism. TJie Pil- 
grims were Protestants, and so were the Puritans, 
and so were the Quakers, and so were the Scotch, 
who brought with them the church of John Knox, 
and so were the men of the Jamestown Colony, 
Virginia, and so were the Huguenots. When you 
have mentioned these, who are left as makers of 
America? 

The American Republic is the exponent of 
Protestantism, the fullest and most all-around ex- 
ponent on the globe. Americanism and Protes- 
tantism are synonyms. Do you object to this 
statement because by implication it bears hard on 
Romanism? Do you demand that Romanism shall 
be named in some way with Americanism, the on- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 179 

marching and triumphing political ism of the age? 
Very well, I will name it and put my thought 
in another form. Americanism is Romanism Cal- 
vinized, Lutherized, Zwingliized. Americanism is 
Rome minus the pope, minus the papal ablegate, 
minus the cardinal, minus Mariolatry, minus the 
dogma of infallibility, minus the parochial school, 
minus the mass, minus the sword of persecution, 
minus the hierarchy, minus the union of church 
and state with the church supreme, minus the 
censorship of the intellect, minus the priesthood. 
Pare these excrescences off Romanism and I am 
a Romanist. Pare these excrescences off Romanism 
and your remainder will be something like Protes- 
tantism. Pare these excrescences off Romanism 
and you will unfetter the consciences of men, take 
away the censorship of the intellect, and inaugu- 
rate freedom of thought and speech and choice and 
religious action. You will insure a free press, a 
free platform, a free school, a free church, and a 
free state. The clear verdict of history is this: 
Romanism as a system, without these modifica- 
tions, can make no claim to be one of the makers 
of America. Only a stray Romanist here and there, 
Romanists who were better than the system, who 
acted without ex cathedra authority, lent a helping 
hand. They represented themselves and not the 
system. The system was at work on the other 
side of the Atlantic and represented itself. This 



180 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the story of the Huguenots fully shows. It was the 
persecutions of Romanism that drove the Hugue- 
nots and the Dutch Puritans and kindred peoples 
from their native lands to this New World in search 
of liberty. 

I will give right here a specimen from Hugue- 
not history indicative of the spirit and conduct of 
Romanism back in the early ages when this con- 
tinent was being peopled. Back in the year 1562 
Admiral Coligni, a commanding Huguenot of 
France, seeing troublous times ahead for the peo- 
ple of his faith, thought to establish a refuge for 
them in the New World. For this purpose he sent 
a colony of Huguenots out to Florida. This 
angered Philip H. of Spain, who was the right 
hand of the pope of Rome. He could not bear the 
thought that the religion of John Calvin should 
have a single foothold on the American continent. 
He sent over Pedro Melendez to destroy them. 
This man, fired by Jesuit priests, gathered an army 
of twenty-five hundred, crossed the sea, and landed 
at St. Augustine, Fla. He issued this message on 
landing: " The Frenchman who is a Catholic I will 
spare, but every heretic shall die." Then began 
the work of death, and the Huguenot colony was 
wiped out of existence. The men, the defenseless 
women, the little children, the sick, were all cruelly 
massacred. That was a scene enacted on the 
soil that is part of the American Republic to-day. 



THE HUGUENOTS. 181 

Was Pedro Melendez one of the makers of our 
Republic? 

One thing is certain, and that is, Romanism in 
America is not represented by tJie Huguenots, nor 
by the Pilgrims, nor by the Hollanders, nor by the 
Scotch. Its largest representation is found in the 
Irish. The Irish stand as the exponents of Rome. 
Now the Irish emigration is a late importation. 
The people of this race were not here early enough 
to be added to the list of the makers of the Re- 
public. They have been here only long enough 
to be makers of modern New York — New York 
prior to November 6, 1894, New York which is 
now on the dissecting table of the Lexow Inves- 
tigation Committee. I have the statistics to show 
that the Irish emigration to America belongs 
largely to the last half of this present century. 
Now I am not finding fault with this race for its 
tardiness in coming here, nor for its lateness in 
discovering that there is no Romanized state in all 
Europe equal to our Republic, though Rome has 
had centuries upon centuries to make such a state, 
and has had kings at its command. With all my 
heart I forgive the Irish for their lateness in com- 
ing, and for their comfort I would assure them that 
the Hollanders and Pilgrims and Puritans and the 
followers of John Knox filled their places admira- 
bly back yonder in the formative period of our 
national life. But I am not going to strike a single 



182 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

narrow note in this service to-night, so I say — I 
am American enough to say even to this people : 
If you want the freedom of our land ; if you want 
to enjoy our citizenship ; if you want to educate 
your children in our free public schools; if you 
want to help build up our institutions and defend 
our Declaration of Independence and Constitu- 
tion; if you want to take our oath of naturaliza- 
tion, which cuts off every man who takes it from 
all allegiance, direct or implied, to every other civil 
power whatsoever, and which makes the Ameri- 
can Republic exclusively supreme ; if you want to 
become Americanized through and through, in 
and out, head and heart ; and if you want to be 
an American henceforth in all your life — school 
life, home life, business life, social life, church life, 
civil life — then come. If you come in this spirit 
and for these purposes, then, in the name of the 
great American commonwealth, welcome. But re- 
member this : the battles fought and won in the 
Old World declare that any other type of coming 
will be utterly vain and futile. The things of 
medieval times have taken their departure from 
this earth forever. The eagle is out of its shell. 
Our chariot of nationality is drawn by the noble 
steeds of individual liberty and popular education. 
You may ride with us if you wish, but you cannot 
drive. Uncle Sam does that. 

But now for the special history of the evening, 



THE HUGUENOTS. 183 

viz., " The Story of the Huguenots." The Htigne- 
nots are two centuries older than the American 
RepubHc. Their cause began with the French 
Reformation, which antedated by several years 
the Reformation in Germany under Luther and the 
Reformation in Switzerland under Zwingli. Like 
these reformations, it began by the unchaining of 
the Bible and the putting of the Word of God into 
the hands of the people. Their cause arose under 
the reign of Francis I. of France, and continued 
through the reigns of Henry H., Francis H., Charles 
IX., Henry HI. and IV., and Louis XIII., XIV., 
XV. and XVI. Louis XVI. was on the throne of 
France when the American Revolution began. 

The French people are just a people in which a 
great reformation might be expected to succeed, 
and D'Aubigne asserts that their reformation was 
of indigenous origin. They are a people of ag- 
gressive spirit, susceptible to great suggestions, 
and quick in the apprehension of ideas. They are 
full of vivacity and of brightness and of irresistible 
impulse and enthusiasm. The Reformation began 
with Professor Lefevre, who taught his pupil, 
William Farel, the doctrine of justification by faith 
and a love for the Bible. These two were timid 
until they were joined by John Calvin and Theo- 
dore Beza, when the cause received a great im- 
petus. Calvin was the great French reformer, and 
Beza was the man who uttered that immortal say- 



184 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ing to the king, " Sire, it is in truth the lot of the 
church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure 
blows and not to strike them ; but also, may it 
please you to remember that it is an anvil that 
has worn out many hammers." The Huguenots 
were Calvinist in faith and had Calvin himself as 
their teacher. They were a people of the open 
Book. Their church polity was Presbyterian. They 
were great lovers of the Psalms, and upon all oc- 
casions sang the version translated and put into 
meter by Clement Merot. The Psalms were the 
Marseillaises to which they marched in all their 
battles. I do not need to say that their religious 
faith and their church polity were such as to 
awaken in the Huguenots the spirit of liberty and 
plant in their souls the germs of republicanism. 
That is the legitimate product of Calvinism, which 
exalts God and conscience as supreme ; and the 
legitimate outgrowth of Presbyterianism, which is 
representative in its genius and which gives every 
man the liberty of choosing those who shall repre- 
sent him and of holding them to account. It was 
an old-time saying — as old as tJie Huguenots them- 
selves — "The Huguowts are all republicans." The 
hierarchy of Rome saw this, and so did the kings 
of France, who were under the control of Rome. 
Hence the bitter and bloody persecutions which 
were inaugura<^ed against tJie Huguenots and which 
continued for two hundred years. 



THE HUGUENOTS. 185 

My fellow-men, Calvinism carries in it republics, 
just as the acorn carries in it fleets of sailing ships. 
All that Calvinism needs is just what the acorn 
needs, viz., soil to grow in. Give the acorn growth 
and the ships will come. Give Calvinism growth and 
the republics will come. Give Calvinism Geneva 
and you will have a republic; give it America and 
you will have a republic ; yes, give it even France 
itself and give it time and you will have a republic. 
Away back in the seventeenth century the Hugue- 
nots converted the city of La Rochelle into a re- 
public which for years lived in the hearts of Ro- 
man Catholic, monarchical France. Although in 
the course of time La Rochelle was leveled to the 
ground, France never forgot it. It left more or less 
of a longing for another republic larger and more 
endurable. That longing we have seen realized in 
our own day ; it is realized in the present republic 
of France. M. Grevy, the first president of the 
new republic, in 1879, in publicly giving its history, 
turned to the surviving Huguenots and used these 
words: "The Huguenot church is the mother of 
modern democracy." That was a tribute to Cal- 
vinism, M. Gre'vy might have enlarged ; he might 
have particularized ; he might have pointed to the 
new system of public education which is the cor- 
ner-stone of the French republic, and have given 
the Huguenots credit for that, for the public schools 
of France were instituted largely through the in- 



186 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

fluence and labors of the Huguenot statesman, 
Guizot. 

I cannot relate here in detail the persecutions 
to which the Huguenots were subjected during the 
two hundred years prior to the American Republic. 
If I entered into details I should have to give you 
ten thousand touching stories of woe, in which 
tender women and timid, tiny children, equally 
with brave-hearted men, rose to the dignity of 
moral heroes. 

My fellow-men, there are centuries of suffering 
and struggle back of our liberties. They cost whole 
generations of self-denial and patience and forti- 
tude and sore experience. A people cannot rise 
from serfage to best sovereignty in a day ; the 
training of generations cannot be fire-cast at will. 

The persecutions of the fathers whom we honor 
to-night began by a prohibition of the assembly 
of their General Synod, which was nothing less than 
the congress of a religious republic where the think- 
ing men of the Huguenots were trained to free 
thought and equal rights and the principles of rep- 
resentation and the exercise of religious freedom. 
When these things are put into a man's religion 
they will soon find their way out into a man's pol- 
itics. Civil liberty and religious liberty are insep- 
arable. Hence the French Jesuits raised the cry, 
" Crush these things out of the religion of tJie Hu- 
guenots! Crush out the Huguenots themselves!" 



THE HUGUENOTS. 187 

No Huguenot synod was allowed to assemble for 
two hundred years. Before they could meet Na- 
poleon III. had to fall and the present French re- 
public had to be established. To-day that synod 
does meet, and it legislates for one million Hugue- 
nots. 

The persecutions which followed the hostile cry 
of the Jesuits culminated in three marked historical 
events : the massacre of St. Bartholomew in the 
reign of Charles IX., 1572 ; the siege and demoli- 
tion of the republic of La Rochelle under Cardinal 
Richelieu in the reign of Louis XIII., 1628; and 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the reign 
of Louis XIV., 1685. I can speak now only of 
the first and last of these. 

The massacre of St. Bartholomew was ordered 
by Charles IX., who was the tool of others. It 
was radical, cowardly, and cunning. It meant the 
extermination of the Huguenot cause, root and 
branch. It equaled the atrocities of Nero and 
Caligula. It was the slaughter of the unsuspect- 
ing and unarmed. The streets of Paris ran blood. 
Seventy thousand of the purest characters of the 
land were butchered in cold blood. Protestants 
everywhere were horrified. John Knox delivered 
this philippic to the French ambassador to Britain : 
" Go tell your master that God's vengeance will 
never depart from him nor from his house. His 
name shall remain an execration to posterity, and 



188 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

no heir of his shall enjoy the kingdom in peace." 
That sounds like a message from one of the old 
Hebrew prophets. But it was literally fulfilled. 
Charles died heirless and in an agony of remorse 
and despair, with the thought of the massacre tor- 
menting him and setting his soul on fire with the 
fire of hell. This festival of blood was looked upon 
as a grand triumph by the head of the papacy. 
He issued a medal to celebrate it, and had all the 
bells of Rome ring a Jubilate. Was that the true 
spirit of Rome? If so, then I ask, has Rome 
changed? If so, in what respect? In nature or 
simply in manner ? In purpose or merely in policy ? 
Has it repudiated its old self? Where? When? 
How? History is terribly against it, and we have 
a right to demand the unquestionable evidence of 
a change. When that massacre was celebrated 
Rome had crowns at her feet. Now, to-day, there 
is not a single sovereign in her councils. The 
nations have changed; has Rome changed? 

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis 
XIV. came later, and as a piece of diabolism it 
equaled the massacre. It was preceded by such 
acts as these : a decree that a Protestant boy of 
fourteen and a girl of twelve might lawfully re- 
nounce the faith of their parents ; finally the age 
of conversion was fixed at seven. A child that 
could be coaxed to say Ave Maria was instantly 
claimed as a Catholic, and taken from its home and 



THE HUGUENOTS. 189 

placed in the schools in the hands of the priests to 
be brought up as such. That was a direct strike 
at the family. That was the parochial school grown 
ripe. Preaching was forbidden ; the singing of 
psalms was forbidden. Catholics owing Protes- 
tants were given three years' extension. Protes- 
tant seamstresses were forbidden to work for 
themselves, and thus left to the mercy of Catholic 
employers. Decrees were issued which took away 
the trades and the professions and the means of a 
livelihood from all Protestants. Then came the 
thunderbolt of revocation, which left no hope for 
a single Huguenot in all France. The churches 
were closed and leveled to the ground. The pastors 
were given just fifteen days to clear the country. 
Then followed the Inquisition, the breaking of hu- 
man bodies on the wheel, imprisonment, servitude 
in the galleys, nameless and shameless indignities, 
banishment, and death by the thousands. I hear 
you cry, " Tell us no more of this; is there no di- 
vine Providence?" Yes, there is a divine Provi- 
dence. Divine Providence is seen in this : this 
inhumanity was the seed that grew the French 
Revolution, which shed the blood of the Church 
of Rome in the domain of France as though it had 
been so much water. Catholic France paid for all 
this in the horrors of the French Revolution. She 
sowed the wind, she reaped the whirlwind. 

The romance of Providence is seen on other lines. 



190 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

which turned these very events against Rome ana 
made them issue in the upbuilding of Protestan- 
tism, which they were intended to destroy. Hugue- 
not fugitives by the thousands flocked to Protestant 
Holland and Protestant Prussia and Protestant 
England, and built up these Protestant powers, 
transferring to them the industries and trades and 
professions which hitherto had made France great. 
Follow these refugees in England, for example; 
you will find their descendants in the very fore- 
most families of that great nation. Some of them 
married into the nobility. There is Huguenot 
blood coursing even in the veins of Victoria, the 
Queen of England. As her offspring married into 
the royal family of Germany, there is Huguenot 
blood in the emperor of that great kingdom. If 
you will follow little Brandenburg of Prussia, which 
opened its gates to the Huguenot exiles, and if you 
will mark what the exiles did for it, and then what 
part it played in bringing into existence the present 
German empire, the great Protestant force of the 
European continent, you will find a very romance 
of Providence, and will see how France, by issuing 
the decree of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
was casting the guns that did such dread execution 
in her humiliation during the late Franco-Prussian 
War. 

But I must get closer to the American Republic. 
This cruel treatment of the Huguenots in their na- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 191 

live land has a direct relation to it. These ante- 
cedent events in the lands across the seas were 
nothing less than the penning of the first words of 
the American Declaration of Independence. They 
were the far-off drum-beat of the American Rev- 
olution. They were the making and the drilHng 
of the coming American soldiers, patriots, and 
statesmen. Out of these crucial fires came the 
sires, and from the sires came the sons who were 
the men of Lexington and of Yorktown. 

Do you inquire of me how the Huguenots served 
the American Republic and helped in its upbuild- 
ing ? I answer, they did this in a twofold way : 

First, they served A uierica abroad and by antici- 
pation. 

Second, they served America on American soil. 

In speaking of the service which the Hugjiejwts 
rendered to the American Republic abroad and by 
anticipation I shall confine myself to one line, viz., 
the line of service which they rendered through 
and by means of England. The American Re- 
public came directly and largely from England. 
Because England was Protestant we are Protestant. 
If our liberties came from Protestantism, then the 
power that worked to make England Protestant 
served us. The refugee Huguenots were that 
power. They served us abroad by serving Eng- 
land. They helped to make Protestant England, 
which made America Protestant. 



192 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Let me give you two incidents illustrative of the 
way the Huguenots served England. 

The first incident is the conflict between James 
II. and William, Prince of Orange — William III. 
If James succeeds, England will be Catholic ; if 
William succeeds, England will be Protestant. The 
fate of Protestantism is trembling in the balance. 
The little army that invades England under Wil- 
liam III. wins the day, and that little army has 
as its backbone the Huguenot refugees. Michelet, 
the great historian, says, " Amid the chilling delays 
on the part of the British people the army of Wil- 
Ham remained firm, and it was the Calvinistic ele- 
ment in it, the Calvinistic Huguenots, that made 
it firm." There stood men who had lost their all 
on earth, who had no hearth but the ground. They 
were overshadowed now by the flag of Orange, 
which was the symbol of their principles, and they 
would have died over and over again rather than 
give way to James. Around that httle army rallied 
the Protestant force of Britain, and the royal power 
slipped from the grip of Romanism. James fled 
to France. But the struggle was not over. Louis 
XIV. of France, who issued the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, received James. He was morti- 
fied to think that his own refugees were the soul 
of this defeat. He determined to retrieve it. He 
fitted up an army and put James at the head of it. 
This army invaded Britain. It landed in the north 



THE HUGUENOTS. 193 

of Ireland. There another battle was fought, the 
battle of the Boyne, and James was again and 
finally defeated. Who won that battle, the famous 
battle of the Boyne, which carried in it so much 
of the future and gave to Protestantism the pos- 
session of the British throne? A Huguenot. It 
was the Huguenot Schronberg who commanded 
the Protestant forces that day, and although he 
fell in the battle, he left the kingdom in the hands 
of William HI. Thus it pleased the God of battles 
to use the persecuted and dispersed and down- 
trodden French refiigees to turn the helm of the 
mightiest matters of destiny and to share in the 
glory of His providence over nations and over 
the march of truth. 

England is now ready to bring its Protestantism 
withits republican principlesovertotheNew World. 
This it does. And it here has another battle with 
Romanism. It has to meet the same foe that it met 
by the river Boyne, viz., the foe who persecuted 
the Huguenots. Rome determined to have this 
New World, and so through Spain it took posses- 
sion of South America, and through France it took 
possession of North America. As far back as the 
landing of the Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth Rock 
Cardinal Richelieu founded New France in North 
America. He made this law : " Everybody settling 
in New France must be a Catholic." None of the 
hated Huguenots were to be allowed to enter. This 



194 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

was done to checkmate Protestant England. The 
EngHsh and French met at Quebec and fought out 
the question, To whom shall America belong? In 
the great battle of Quebec Montcalm led the 
French, General Wolfe led the English. Montcalm 
fought for the old regime, Wolfe for the House of 
Commons ; Montcalm fought for allegiance to king 
and priest, Wolfe for the habeas corpus and free 
inquiry ; Montcalm fought for the past, Wolfe for 
the future ; Montcalm fought for Louis XV., Wolfe 
for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. 
Although both men were killed in that battle, 
Montcalm lost and Wolfe won. With the triumph 
of Wolfe commenced the history of the United 
States. 

France should have won that battle ; she should 
have held America for Rome. She had the ad- 
vantage. She had Quebec as her Gibraltar and 
she had a chain of forts from Quebec through the 
heart of the country down through the Mississippi 
valley to the very city of New Orleans. She had 
also allies in many tribes of Indians whom she 
converted to Catholicism. She might have won 
that battle, and she would have won that battle, if 
— and the Huguenots were in that " if " — if she 
had only used the forces against England which 
she used in persecuting and driving out the Hugue- 
nots from the home land. One historian says that 
the persecution of the Huguenots in France called 



THE HUGUENOTS. inri 

from America, the important center of conflict, the 
forces that would inevitably have torn from the 
American Protestants the fair heritage they now 
have. My fellow-men, we gained our heritage at 
no less a price than the martyrdom of the Hiigne- 
iiots. They served America by occupying and 
keeping away the forces of France which would 
have crushed America. 

I am ready now to speak of the service which 
the Huguenots rendered the American Republic on 
American soil. 

The difficulty in tracing the Huguenots in direct 
American history comes from this : Often they 
changed their names into the language of the coun- 
tries to which they fled, and ever after were known 
by their translated names ; and often they married 
and intermarried with the peoples of these coun- 
tries. An example or two of the way they changed 
their names will show what I mean. M, Le Blanc, 
if he fled into Holland, changed his name into the 
Dutch and became known as Mr. Dewitt; or if he 
went into England he changed his name into Mr. 
White. M. LetelHer became Mr. Tailor. M. Le 
Roy became Mr. King. 

Coming over from Holland with Dutch names, 
and from England with English names, it is hard 
to distinguish the Huguenots from the Dutch or 
from the English. The interblending of races is 
always destructive of genealogy. In all of the 



196 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

makers of America which I hav-e discussed up to 
this point in this course of Forefathers' addresses 
there have been veins of Huguenot blood. Since 
I wrote the Scotch Forefathers' address I have 
come across the annals of the province of Ulster, 
and have found that two or three thousand Hugue- 
not refugees cast in their lot with the Scotch of 
Ulster and became part and parcel of that people, 
and thus came to America in the exodus from 
Ulster. We know that there were Huguenots in 
the exodus of Hollanders who founded the New 
Netherlands. Peter Minuit, the first governor of 
that colony where New York now stands, was 
probably one of them, as his name shows. The 
first child born in the New Netherlands was a 
Huguenot child. Peter Stuyvesant, who ruled old 
New York, was married to a Huguenot. 

Take the colony which has always been supposed 
to be the purest of all — that is, the purest from an 
English standpoint — the Plymouth Colony, which 
came over in the Mayfloiver. There was Hugue- 
not blood in that! The most beautiful woman 
who sailed in the Mayflower was a Huguenot — she 
who turned the head of Miles Standish and won 
the heart of John Alden, and who to-day, as she 
walks the pages of Longfellow, captivates every 
man in America. She is our model for wife and 
mother. She is the ideal of our young men for 
their sister, and their ideal also for some other 



THE HUGUENOTS. 197 

body's sister. I mean Priscilla Mullens. She was 
the daughter of the Huguenot, William Molines, 
a passenger on ih&AIayJiowcr, whose name was 
corrupted by the clumsy lips of the Nottingham- 
shire and Yorkshire yeomen from Molines into 
plain, homely Mullens. We always supposed that 
the beautiful Priscilla was an English Puritan 
maiden, and yet she has been a puzzle to us as 
an Enghsh Puritan girl. I never saw an English 
Puritan girl quite as chipper, nor one who played 
her cards as Priscilla played hers. English Puritan 
girls as a rule are sedate, and fairly stifif and cold 
with propriety when being courted. They always 
wait until they are asked out and out before they 
say "Yes." They do not even give themselves away 
by a single blush. A fellow-townsman, Horace 
Graves, in a bright and interesting article in the De- 
cember number of the " New England Magazine," 
1894, is our teacher here. I quote from his article, 
not verbatim, but from memory : " It has always 
been a source of wonder to us men that an English 
Puritan girl could have had the ready wit to give 
John Alden ' the tip ' that released him from his 
ambiguous wooing and herself from the domination 
of Miles Standish, the widower, the fierce little 
captain who had killed and buried one good 
woman already. How blind we have been to the 
Gallic coquetry of Priscilla, which belonged to her 
national blood — -a coquetry which could hold on to 



198 J/AA'£AS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

old Miles until she had secured young John ! I 
tell you, young men and old men who so much 
admire Priscilla, she was a worthy progenitor of 
the American girl, who knows how to take care 
of herself." 

While tJie Huguenots came to our land through 
intermarriage with other people, and with changed 
names and incognito, they came not in that way 
only ; they came as Huguenots, with their own 
names and with their national blood unmixed. It 
was the pure Huguenots who founded such colonies 
as the colony of Oxford, Mass., the place where 
the city of Worcester now stands ; and the colony 
of New Rochelle, off Long Island Sound ; and the 
colony of New Paltz, Ulster County, N. Y., be- 
tween theCatskillsand theShawangunk Mountains. 
Charles II. sent a colony to South Carolina, where 
afterward there came sixteen thousand Huguenots. 
William III. sent a colony to Virginia, which settled 
near the James River. Thousands of the Hugue- 
nots came to the city of New York. Long Island 
was first settled by them. Bedloe's Island, which 
holds the Bartholdi statue, the gift of the French 
Republic to the American Republic, was owned by 
and named after one of the Huguenots. They did 
not care to perpetuate their nationality here, and 
being of a social nature, they allowed themselves 
to be absorbed into the population of the Republic. 
But they made their mark, and made it indehbly. 



THE HUGUENOTS. 199 

For, as John Fiske says, " In determining the 
character of a community one hundred selected 
men and women are more potent than a thousand 
men and women taken at random." 

Nowhere is their influence brought out better 
than in an article by Henry Cabot Lodge entitled 
"The Distribution of Ability in America." This 
article is modeled after an article which appeared 
in the "Nineteenth Century," called "The Dis- 
tribution of Ability in England." Henry Cabot 
Lodge gets the facts upon which he bases his tab- 
ulation from Appleton's " Encyclopedia of Biog- 
raphy," a six-volume work. In this article you 
can see at a glance the men who fought the battles 
of the country, governed the country, produced 
the literature and art and science of the country, 
built up its industries, gave it its inventions, and 
made its history. He groups them by States and 
then he groups them by races. The race rate runs 
in this order, and it grades the races : the English, 
the Scotch-Irish, the German, the Huguenots, the 
Scotch pure and simple, and the Dutch. Lodge 
says, " I believe that, in proportion to their num- 
bers, the Hugiienots produced and gave to the 
American Republic more men of ability than any 
other race." He contrasts them with the Germans, 
whom they outstrip in the production of fine 
American personalities, and he explains the reason 
of the difference. The Germans settled in com- 



200 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

munities and separated themselves from the outside 
world, TJie Huguenots at once merged themselves 
into the body of the people and became thoroughly- 
Americanized. From all this he draws this whole- 
some moral : " The people who succeed in our Re- 
public are the people who become most grandly 
and quickly and thoroughly American." This 
should be so! Make it so! Keep it so! 

When we come to the great Revolutionary 
struggle tJie Huguenots grandly hold their own and 
do their part. Faneuil Hall played a part in the 
American Revolution. It was called "the cradle 
of liberty." Its four walls have heard the advo- 
cacy of every great cause pertaining to the up- 
building of America. Faneuil Hall was the gift of 
a Huguenot and bears his name. I called it the 
proudest day of my life when I first spoke in Faneuil 
Hall with Phillips Brooks and the governor of 
Massachusetts, and from that platform looked at 
the pictured faces of Faneuil and Webster and 
Adams and Hancock and Phillips and a score of 
others like them. The thought that my voice was 
echoing where their voices once echoed, and that I 
pleaded a cause which they would have pleaded had 
they been here, almost overpowered me with rev- 
erence. I said to myself, " This is honor enough 
for a lifetime." I wish I had time to tell you the 
story of the gift of that hall and relate the grand 
patriotic uses to which it has been put. There is 



THE HUGUENOTS. 201 

no quainter story in our annals, and no story that 
has greater national thrill. Just as the holy temple 
stood in Jerusalem, a witness for God, a monitor 
to the conscience of man, a talking embodiment 
of all that was grand in the Hebrew's past, so 
Faneuil Hall stands in our Republic, great with 
the greatness of the grand men who have conse- 
crated its platform, and strong with the strength 
of the magnificent and triumphant causes which 
have been advocated within its walls, and living 
with the intense life which comes from the moral 
and intellectual and spiritual electricity which has 
been stored up in every brick and timber of its 
historic structure. Faneuil Hall stands in Boston, 
the old city of the American Revolution, a con- 
stant rebuke to all that is low and degrading in 
national life, and a constant inspiration to every 
brilliant conception in the American mind that 
makes for patriotism. 

Among the forces that worked in creating our 
Republic was the Colonial Congress. It issued 
the Declaration of Independence, and it educated 
the people into the acceptance of that Declaration 
of this Congress. William Pitt in Parliament said, 
" I have read Thucydides and have studied and 
admired the master states of the world, but I must 
declare that for solidity, force, sagacity, and wis- 
dom of conclusion under difficult circumstances, 
no nation or body of men stands in advance of the 



202 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

General Congress of Philadelphia. All attempts 
to impose despotism upon such men will be vain. 
We shall be forced ultimately to retract. Let us 
retract while we can, not when we must." Of this 
body, thus eulogized by the foremost statesman of 
Europe, a Huguenot was the first president. Out of 
its seven presidents no less than three were Hugue- 
nots — Henry Laurens, John Jay, and EliasBoudinot. 
Henry Laurens was born in Charleston, S. C. 
He was an American patriot from conviction. 
When solicited by his friends not to take part in 
the American conflict he replied, " I am deter- 
mined to stand or fall with my country." Besides 
being president of Congress he was chosen min- 
ister to Holland to represent the colonies. On his 
way to Holland he was captured by the British 
and imprisoned in the Tower of London. While 
there he was offered his freedom if he would give 
up the American cause. To this he replied, with 
the old heroism, " I will never thus tarnish my 
name with infamy, nor disgrace my family." He 
was one of the four Americans who drew up and 
signed the treaty of peace in Paris which secured 
for the thirteen colonies their independence and 
placed them among the nations of the world. The 
distinguished four who secured this treaty were 
Franklin, Adams, Jay, and Laurens; and Jay and 
Laurens, the peers of Franklin and Adams, were 
Huguenots. 



THE HUGUENOTS. 203 

No name in American history has greater prom- 
inence and honor than the name of John Jay, the 
first chief justice of the nation, and president of the 
Continental Congress, and president of the Amer- 
ican Bible Society, and president of the earliest 
society for the emancipation of the slaves, and 
signer of the treaty of peace which brought the 
Revolutionary War to a successful finale. 

To the names of Laurens and Jay and Boudinot 
must be added those of Gabriel Mannigault, who 
advanced large loans to the colonial government 
and kept it from bankruptcy, and Francis Marion, 
who was a noted general in the Revolutionary 
army. Both of these were Huguenots. We must 
add also the name of Alexander Hamilton, who 
was a Huguenot on his mother's side. Of Hamil- 
ton John Fiske writes, " Of all the young men of 
that day, save, perhaps, William Pitt, the most pre- 
cocious was Alexander Hamilton. So great was 
his genius for organization that in many essential 
respects the American government is moving to- 
day along the lines which he was the first to mark 
out. In the financial department he has been 
equaled by no other American statesman save 
Albert Gallatin." But who was Albert Gallatin, 
the peer of Hamilton? He was another Hugue- 
not, and the Secretary of the Treasury during 
Washington's administration. 

I could make this address an address of nothing 



204 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

but noted Huguenot names, so many are the emi- 
nent Huguenots in our American life. Theirs 
are names such as these : the Bowdoins, who gave 
us Bowdoin College ; the Gallaudet, who pioneered 
in the education of the deaf and dumb; Christo- 
pher Robert, the New York merchant who built the 
college bearing his name at Constantinople ; the 
Bayards, the Marquands, the Higginses, the Vas- 
sars, the Durands, the Bethunes, the Vincents, the 
Ballous, the De Lanceys, the Edwardses ; the mar- 
tyred President Garfield ; and hundreds of other 
names with an equal luster. 

But I am speaking now of Revolutionary times 
and must confine myself to these. In the great 
cause of the American Revolution the Huguenot 
patriots were in it from alpha to omicron and from 
omicron to omega. They played a conspicuous 
part both at the beginning of it and at the middle 
of it and at the close of it. At the very beginning 
of the American Revolution it was Paul Revere, 
the son of a Huguenot refugee, who took that 
famous ride from Boston to Concord and waked 
up the farmers and townspeople, and warned them 
that the British were coming to seize the stores 
which they had gathered and locked away in view 
of possible war emergencies. The British came, 
the battle of Lexington, the first battle of the 
Revolutionary War, was fought, and the American 
farmers won. That midnight cry of Paul Revere, 



THE HUGUENOTS. 205 

tJie Huguenot, awoke the American people to a 
conflict the result of which was the birth of this 
great Republic. 

At the middle of the Revolution it was a force 
of Huguenots, with the Scotch from North Caro- 
lina, under Colonel William Campbell from Virginia, 
which won the strategic battle of Kings Mountain, 
the turning event of the Revolutionary contest in 
the South. 

At the very close of the American Revolution 
it was the son of a Huguenot who drew up the 
stipulations for the surrender of Yorktown. York- 
town was the grand end. This Huguenot was 
John Laurens, the son of the first president of the 
Colonial Congress. As an officer in the American 
army he took one of the strong redoubts of York- 
town, while Rochambeau took a second and Alex- 
ander Hamilton took a third. With these redoubts 
taken there was nothing for the British general, 
Cornwallis, to do but to surrender. To young 
Laurens, a bright lawyer, Washington assigned the 
task of drawing up the articles of surrender, and 
these Cornwallis signed and was made a prisoner 
of war. The romance in this surrender was this : 
At the time young Laurens was drawing up these 
articles his father, Henry Laurens, was still a 
prisoner of war in the Tower of London. Young 
Laurens was making Cornwallis a prisoner, and by 
this he was not only serving his country, but he 



206 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

was serving in a most signal way his imprisoned 
father. For when the time came to exchange the 
prisoners of war Cornwallis was exchanged for 
Henry Laurens, and Henry Laurens, bidding fare- 
well to the Tower of London, went direct to Paris, 
that there, with Franklin and Adams and Jay, he 
might sign tlie treaty of peace and thus make the 
American Republic a fact for all time. 

Such were the Huguenots: a people with an open 
Bible ; who fostered popular education ; who fought 
absolutism in all forms, civil and ecclesiastical, 
wherever found ; who loved a large-thoughted, 
republican church; and who were willing to pay 
a great price for a great thing; who paid their all 
for liberty. They were a great people because they 
companionated with a great God. Well may we 
pray the prayer taught us concerning them by that 
sweet daughter of the Huguenots, Mrs. Sigour- 
ney : 

" On all who bear 
Their name or lineage may their mantle rest : 
That firmness for the truth, that calm content 
With simple pleasures, that unswerving trust in 
Trial, adversity, and death, which cast 
Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements 
That peopled the New World." 

As we leave the study of this evening we do so 
with this conviction : that it is men who make the 
nation. They constitute its wealth ; they carry in 
them its strength ; they determine its future. Men 



THE HUGUENOTS. 207 

— men of ideas, men of faith, men of hope, men of 
pure loves and of pure lives, men of sacrifice, men 
of conscience, men who love their country, men 
who walk day by day with their hand in God's — 
these are they who have made us strong as a 
Republic and who keep us strong. It is men who 
make the nation. 

" Ouida," in one of her stories, entitled " A Dog 
of Flanders " — a story which for beauty and pathos 
and pureness is excelled nowhere — puts this thought 
in a fine way. She illustrates the thought by 
showing how Rubens made Antwerp, with its 
sweet-toned, ringing bells. She writes : " The 
greatness of the mighty master rests upon Ant- 
werp, and wherever one turns in its narrow streets 
his glory lies therein and transfigures every mean 
thing. This city, which is the tomb of Rubens, 
still lives to us through him and him alone. With- 
out Rubens what were Antwerp? A muddy, 
dusky, bustling mart which no man would ever 
care to look upon save the traders who do busi- 
ness upon its wharfs. With Rubens, to the whole 
world of man it is a sacred name, a sacred soil — a 
Bethlehem where a god of art saw light, a Gol- 
gotha where a god of art lies dead." Having said 
this, she turns to the world and says, " O nations ! 
closely should you treasure your great men, for by 
them alone will the future know of you." 

What America needs above all things to-day is 



208 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

this : a new consecration to that manhood and that 
womanhood which in the beginning made this 
Repubhc, It needs and it should earnestly seek 
the reproduction of the civil fathers. It should 
seek for sons and daughters who will write their 
names with the pen of holy deeds side by side with 
the names of the Virgmians and the Pilgrims and 
the Puritans and the Hollanders and the descen- 
dants of John Knox and the Huguenots. 



VII. 
THE QUAKERS; OR, IDEAL CIVILIZATION. 



VII. 

THE QUAKERS; OR, IDEAL 
CIVILIZATION. 

We are apt to think of the Quakers as a people 
of peculiarities; they are before our mind as men 
and women of broad-brimmed hats and poke-bon- 
nets, drab coats and gray dresses — a curious people 
of slow movements; a demure people, who are the 
victims of their own virtues. They are a peculiar 
people, but behind every Quaker peculiarity there 
is a consistent reason. The Quakers are more than 
an embodiment of oddities ; they are an embodi- 
ment of great principles and an incarnation of a 
grand life. Both their principles and life have en- 
tered into the bone and sinew of our Republic, and 
both are still necessary for the realization of ulti- 
mate America. The reproduction of their spirit 
and purpose by American citizens will make real, 
by and by, our " manifest destiny." 

We wish to look at this destiny as it exists in 
germ form in the souls of our Quaker ancestors. 
There is nothing more interesting or inspiring or 



214 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

profitable than the experience of those great souls 
who have helped to lead the nations up the heights 
of civilization and into the advances of civic life ; 
who have led the human race nearer to God and 
into genuine and abiding liberty. The Quakers 
had such souls. Such souls looked out of the clear 
and striking faces of George Fox and William Penn, 
Elizabeth Fry and Lucretia Mott. Around the 
lives of such heroes and heroines the history of the 
world has turned as on an axis. They have helped 
to direct the main currents of human thought in the 
right direction. You call them single souls, but 
they have multiplied themselves into myriad souls ; 
they have become a people. There is no getting 
away from the true man and the true woman, from 
the single soul, if you would get at the origin and 
history of great movements. The tendency of 
scientific study in our time has perhaps led us to 
undervalue the influence of great souls. History 
has been believed to advance according to definite 
laws over which neither human genius nor human 
freedom has exerted any appreciable influence. 
Mr. Buckle explains national character as the re- 
sult of circumstances, and he claims that history 
and biography are wholly different in their sphere; 
yet the fact remains "C^sX persons are the ruling cen- 
ters in history. Take such personalities as Augus- 
tine and Luther and Fox and Penn out of history and 
the course of history ceases to be intelligible. Be- 



THE QUAKERS. 215 

cause this is so, we emphasize in this course of study 
tlie names of the great men who stand chief among 
the races and peoples who form the constituents of 
our RepubHc, and we exalt their principles, which 
form the bone and sinew of American manhood. 

We are digging up the past for the instruction 
and encouragement of the present. In this we are 
acting according to the spirit of the times. This 
is an age when there is a craze for digging up the 
past and making it a study and a story. After 
eighteen hundred years Pompeii has been exca- 
vated ; the skeleton of its soldier in his rusty corse- 
let, dug from its ashes after well-nigh two thou- 
sand years of silent guard-keeping, is made an in- 
spiration and an example to courage and fidelity. 
Long, centuries «of oblivion have rested over Egypt 
and Troy and Assyria and the famous city of 
Agamemnon ; but now Professor Sayce and Mari- 
ette Bey read the stones of the Egyptian dynasties 
found in the walls of the uncovered temples; 
Layard and George Smith bring us tablets from 
the libraries of Nineveh ; and Dr. Schliemann gives 
us the gold bracelet of Hecuba and the necklace 
of Clytemnestra. We are doing in history what 
these men are doing in archaeology : we are making 
the past speak. We have dug up the Virginians 
and the Pilgrims and the Puritans and the Hollan- 
ders and the Scotch and the Huguenots, and now we 
propose to dig up the Quakers. 



216 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

The Quakers, when seen at their best, stand in 
American history for ideal civihzation ; and this 
civiHzation is their contribution to the American 
Republic. As historic characters the Quakers are 
a marked and influential people in the midst of the 
most marked and influential types of mankind. 
They have put their stamp indelibly on national 
and international life. If we enter into the courts 
of justice we can see that they have been there : 
the substitution of affirmation in place of the oath 
is their work. The jails of humanity show the re- 
sults of their reform : it was they who changed our 
prisons from sties to sanatoriums. The dream of 
that beautiful prison angel, Elizabeth Fry, is being 
worked out into reality in criminal law, and the 
remedial element in punishment is being pushed 
to the forefront in the administration of justice. 
They have put their mark even on the pages of 
our Holy Bible and have made it a book of greater 
power. They have taken some oi its grandest 
prophecies and statements and commands and 
beatitudes, and by believing them, living them, 
translating them into reigning forces in the home 
and in the church and in the state, they have so 
made these their own that in reading the Book 
we instinctively associate their names with these 
Scriptures. You readily recall the Scriptures to 
which I refer: " And He shall judge between the 
nations, and shall decide concerning many peoples : 



THE QUAKERS. 217 

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall 
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they 
learn war any more " (Isa. ii. 4). Whenever we 
read that we say, " That is the Quaker's prophecy," 
and it is. " Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, 
but rather give place unto wrath : for it is written, 
Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord. 
Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he 
thirst, give him drink : for in so doing thou shalt 
heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome 
of evil, but overcome evil with good " (Rom. xii. 
19-21). When we read that we say, " That is the 
Quaker's gospel," and it is. " Holy men of God 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost " 
(2 Pet. i. 21). When we read that we say, "That 
is the Quaker's rule of speaking when dealing with 
truth," and it is. " Blessed are the peacemakers: 
for they shall be called the children of God." When 
we read that we say, " That is the Quaker's beati- 
tude," and it is. " That was the true Light, which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
When we read that we say, " That is the Quaker's 
text of texts ; that is the Bible's statement of their 
great cardinal fact and doctrine, which they call the 
inner light,'' and it is. By the incarnation of these 
grand parts of the divine Book, the Quakers have 
made the Bible a new and a fresh power in human life. 
The Quakers arose in an age of dogmas and 



218 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

creeds and persecutions and reforms and religious 
revolutions and quarreling ecclesiastics. They 
took their place among the ranks of reformers and 
were the most advanced of all. Their reforms 
were the most sweeping of all. They were the 
liberals and radicals of that age ; they were the re- 
formers of the reformed ; they undertook to reform 
Calvin and Luther and Knox. The Episcopalians 
and Puritans and Presbyterians protested against 
the Romanists, but the Quakers protested against 
the Episcopalians and Puritans and Presbyterians. 
In the language of Milton, to them "presbyter was 
only old priest writ large." The Quakers were the 
Episcopalians and Puritans and Presbyterians of 
the seventeenth century, sweetened and modified 
and made over with a new and a large admixture 
of love. They denied all ecclesiastical authority and 
threw aside all the prevailing ecclesiastical rites ; 
they went to God directly for their instructions, 
and worshiped before God in stillness and silence 
without prescribed forms. As the complement 
of a state ivitJioiit a king, they ofifered mankind 
a chnreh luitJiout a bishop. Their aim was to 
humanize Christianity and substitute a gospel of 
hope for a gospel of despair. Sweeping aside 
creeds and councils and rituals and synods, they 
held that God and the individual man, living in 
loving fellowship, were sufficient. They simplified 
things in a wholesale way and struck for an all- 



THE QUAKERS. 219 

round liberty. This was Americanism before its 
day ; this was Americanism out- Americanized. 

They were a people of great moral purpose. 
Their ideals were their inspiration, and the realiza- 
tion of these ideals was their goal. They got their 
strength from ideals and convictions and visions of 
which the senses take no cognizance. James Free- 
man Clarke calls them the " English mystics." If 
they were mystics they were exceedingly practical 
mystics. They were one of the most independent 
people among all the races. They differed from 
all the sects around them in that they renounced 
the use of all force in the propagation of their prin- 
ciples. They inculcated and practised religious 
toleration. They have the honor of being one of 
the few divisions of Christendom against which the 
charges of cruelty and selfishness and love of power 
cannot be brought. Their gun was a protest, their 
bullet a principle, and their powder the inner light. 
They served the church and state by what they 
were. Their method of pushing their faith was to 
be what they believed and then assert themselves. 
They exalted the passive virtues. This was the 
method of Jesus Christ. All which Jesus ever did 
in this world was to assert Himself and suffer. 
When violence was used against them their prin- 
ciple of action was, Never retaliate. Their method 
of growth was by patience and perseverance and 
quiet suffering, and their method was effective. 



220 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

For example, they carried their rehgion into the 
Massachusetts Colony and planted it right in the 
midst of the hard-headed Puritans. The Puritans 
persecuted them, whipped them, robbed them, 
hung them, but they kept right on asserting 
themselves and suffering until by their patience 
they wore out the cruelty of the Puritans and 
brought the Puritan scourge and scaffold into 
public disgrace. The public, won over to them by 
their beautiful spirit, rose and demanded the ces- 
sation of persecution. Thus they purchased and 
established for us by their sufferings the religious 
toleration which now exists in our Republic. They 
served America by patiently suffering. Their 
martyrdom was like the martyrdom of the church 
of the catacombs, of which history tells us in thrill- 
ing words. The church of the catacombs was the 
king^dom of God in sackcloth, working underground, 
along channels and galleries of rock, to overthrow 
and replace the armed empires above. The Qua- 
kers were content to be in the minority on every 
great question until by self-assertion and honest 
argument and right living they could win men 
enough to their side to make them the majority. 

In the first days their ways and principles spelled 
anarchy, but by the slow education of centuries, and 
by the beneficial changes which they wrought, they 
now spell yighteousness, peace, love. 

You see, I am giving the bright and beautiful 



THE QUAKERS. 221 

side of the Quaker story : I am telling what they 
contributed by way of strength and glory ; I am 
speaking of them as tJie cJiildreji of the light, shin- 
ing with the celestial beauty of a Christ-like spirit. 
In telling the story of the Quakers, there is only 
one starting-point : we must start with George Fox. 
He is to Quakerism what Christ is to Christianity, 
its incarnation. In him we find the traits and 
principles and hopes and methods and life of Qua- 
kers at their best. He represents the heroic age of 
the Quakers. He gave Quakerism as a life and 
started it out on its thrilling career to march 
through England and Holland and America. This 
has been the order and growth of Quakerism : 
George Fox gave the world a Quaker life. Robert 
Barclay took the doctrines and principles and pur- 
poses out of which that Quaker life was constructed 
and built these into a terse, clear, logical Quaker 
system. It was necessary to build such a theologi- 
cal system for the purpose of defense under attack 
and misrepresentation, and as a fair treatment of 
the public. This formulated Quaker system Ed- 
ward Burroughs took and carried out to the world 
and expounded and preached, and by the conver- 
sions which he made built it up into a Quaker so- 
ciety. Then came William Penn and took the life 
of Fox, and the system of Barclay, and the con- 
verts of Burroughs, and built all into a Quaker 
commonwealth, which gave Quakers the civil em- 



222 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

bodiment of their cherished ideals, and which gave 
America the powerful colony of Pennsylvania, a 
bulwark in the defense of freedom. After this came 
John Greenleaf Whittier, who took the common- 
wealth and the converts and the system and the life, 
and beautified all. With chiseled words and sculp- 
tured cadences he built Quakerism into a cathedral- 
like poem of liberty, full of reverence for God, and 
of appreciation of man, and of praise for the truth. 
George Fox, who was the spiritual father of the 
Quakers, was born in 1624. This makes him a child 
of the seventeenth century. Did he rise to power 
in that century? Was he so endowed and did he 
so assert himself as to make for himself an immor- 
tal name among immortal men? If so, he was a 
man among men. That was a wonderful century 
and brought forth wonderful products. It was a 
century when every weakling was relegated to ob- 
scurity ; for George Fox to make his mark in that 
century is all the evidence requi'ed to prove him 
a great man. This was the century of great reli- 
gious wars ; this was the century of great books and 
measures and men. If you except the Bible, the 
most democratic books ever published were pub- 
lished in this century. Cervantes published " Don 
Quixote," which set all the world laughing at sham 
aristocracies and mock heroisms ; that book helped 
to turn away the human mind from the worship of 
the false and artificial. Shakespeare's dramas were 



THE QUAKERS. 22.1 

published then ; his works tended toward human 
equality ; they made kings and queens only men 
and women like their subjects. Bacon's works 
were published then ; these taught men to feel it not 
only their right, but their duty, to look with eyes 
undimmed by a church creed at all things which 
the Lord had created. Bacon's works made it 
possible for Newton to open the heavens, Watt 
the air, Lyell the earth, and Darwin animal life. 
"The Pilgrim's Progress" was published in that 
century ; so was " Paradise Lost," so was Baxter's 
•' Saint's Rest," and so was the Authorized Version 
of the Bible, which gave the Book to the common 
people. The Book is the ever-enduring Magna 
Charta of civil and religious liberty. This was the 
century of the Westminster divines, with their 
Catechism and Confession of Faith. This was the 
century of Cromwell's guns. Can George Fox 
rise in this century ? Can he in this century found 
a sect which shall live and prevail and modify soci- 
ety, and add freedom to freedom, and inaugurate 
reforms which, when carried out, will realize the 
ideal civilization ? Can he lead in the strike for 
independence in an age when the whole trend of 
things is toward independence? He does. 

We get the story of the life of George Fox from 
his own journal. His whole life is here, from the 
cradle to the grave ; not only are his outward acts 
here, his motives are here, his soul, his inner life. 



224 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

From boyhood he was distinguished for great 
purity of thought and act, and for modesty and 
sweetness of disposition. He was large of body 
and large of soul. He was first awakened to life 
in earnest by the shams and inconsistencies of pro- 
fessed church-members. What he saw in them 
raised questions like these in his mind : If these are 
the legitimate product of religion, have men got 
the true religion? Do they understand the way 
to God? Have they the true rule of life? Are 
the churches what they ought to be? Is civiliza- 
tion the true representative of the mind of Christ? 
He sought the leaders of the churches and asked 
them for light, but from them he found no light. 
Then he separated himself from men and gave him- 
self to the study of the Bible until he became filled 
and saturated with its teachings. After this he 
gave himself up to solitary contemplation and deep 
thought and silent waiting for the voice of God. 
Here he found light, for the voice of God spoke to 
him, and he became God- filled and God-guided — 
one of God's prophets. God will fill any man and 
guide any man if he will only do what George Fox 
did. God will re-give by the voice of His Spirit 
the truths of the Bible to any man who is saturated 
with the Bible as George Fox was, and who will 
prayerfully and patiently and silently wait for that 
voice. He has done this for men in every branch 
of the Christian church. 



THE QUAKERS. 225 

Thomas Carlyle helps us to estimate George Fox 
aright; he corrects Macaulay's estimate of him. 
Spurgeon says Macaulay was so warped by preju- 
dice that his measurement of George Fox was alto- 
gether inaccurate. Carlyle's words are : " The most 
remarkable incident in modern history is not the 
Diet of Worms, still less the battle of Austerlitz, 
Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other battle, but George 
Fox making himself a suit of leather. This man, 
the first of the Quakers, was one of those in whom 
the divine idea is pleased to manifest itself and, 
across all the hills of ignorance, shine in awful and 
unspeakable beauty. He is a highly accredited 
prophet of God." 

Two incidents in the life of George Fox let us 
into a large knowledge of the man ; they are an 
epitome of the man ; they interpret the man. The 
first incident took place in a church at Nottingham 
on a Sabbath morning in 1649. The services were 
conducted according to the directory of the West- 
minster Assembly ; the minister was a Presbyterian. 
Suddenly a young man stepped forth into the aisle 
in view of all, and unexpectedly a strong voice rang 
out like a battle-cry. In an instant the blood 
leaped to every brain ; every sleeper awoke, and a 
thousand eager faces strained forward toward the 
youth. He was a tall, gaunt man with piercing 
eyes and long hair and a face emaciated with fast- 
ing; but the glow of his countenance lighted up as 



226 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

he flatly contradicted the preacher. His words 
were : " No ; it is not the Scriptures ; it is the Holy 
Spirit." The preacher's text was, "We have also a 
more sure word of prophecy ; whereunto ye do well 
that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a 
dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star 
arise in your hearts." He had just told the people 
that the more sure word of prophecy mentioned in 
the text was the Bible. George Fox believed that 
the more sure word was the word which the Spirit 
directly speaks to the individual waiting heart ; so 
he contradicted the preacher: "No; it is not the 
Scriptures ; it is the Holy Spirit, who gave the 
Scriptures, who leads into all truth. The Jews had 
the Scriptures, and yet they resisted the Holy Spirit 
and rejected Christ. They undertook to try the 
apostles by the Scriptures, but they erred in judg- 
ment, because they tried them without the Spirit. 
When the apostles tried cases, they issued their de- 
cisions in this form : ' It seems to the Holy Ghost 
and to us to order thus and so.' No ; it is not the 
Scriptures ; it is the Holy Spirit." For this protest 
George Fox was arrested and imprisoned. 

The second incident took place in the city of Lich- 
field, in the center of England. " On a winter day 
in 165 I a tall, strongly built young man, singularly 
handsome, of grave and dignified appearance, was 
seen approaching the city of Lichfield. He wore 
a broad-brimmed hat and a long coat of leather. 



THE QUAKERS. 227 

When the tall spires of the great cathedral caught 
his eye, he stopped, dismissed the few companions 
who were with him, and stood for a moment alone, 
silently praying. Then he moved forward again, 
but slowly as if deliberating, until he reached a 
group of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks. 
By the side of the shepherds he paused once more. 
His actions were peculiar, but on his face was an 
expression which awed the shepherds so that they 
durst not ask him any questions. Taking off his 
shoes, he gave them to the shepherds and resumed 
his march toward the city. Having entered it, he 
walked barefoot through the main street and mar- 
ket-place, crymg in a strong, sweet voice, ' Woe to 
the bloody city ! Woe to the bloody city ! ' That 
man was George Fox." He knew he was risking 
his liberty and perhaps his life by that act, but he 
knew also that he was obeying his conscience and 
his God. He was speaking to a wicked public by 
the language of signs. The language of signs is 
ever a living language and ever a telling language. 
You may criticize the man for this act and you 
may call it a violation of good taste, but this one 
thing remains to be said : Lichfield zvas a success. 
It developed George Fox ; it gave him a recogni- 
tion in the world and set an example for his fol- 
lowers which made them effective witnesses. You 
might as well criticize the Hebrew prophets for 
putting truth in dramatic form. 



228 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Take these two incidents out of the early life of 
George Fox and you unmake the man. You do 
more than that ; you take from his early followers 
that aggressive spirit which made them propagan- 
dists and which inspired them to fearlessness in 
making their public protest against tyrants and 
tyrannies. The Quakers were not a negative 
people, they were a positive people. Without 
the discipline of these two incidents, George Fox 
would never have faced Oliver Cromwell, before 
whom all England trembled, and have talked to 
him as he did. Cromwell felt his power; after the 
interview he said, " Now I see there is a people 
risen that I cannot win either with gifts, honors, 
office, or places ; but all others I can win." With- 
out his example, Quaker missionaries would not 
have gone to Rome as they did, to face the Roman 
pontiff" and charge home upon him his errors ; nor 
would they have gone to Constantinople to face 
the sultan and tell him that God would judge him 
for his barbarous inhumanities. Without his ex- 
ample, Edward Burroughs would not have written 
to Charles II., declaring to him the words of the 
Lord with a boldness which would have done credit 
to Elijah before Ahab. 

We are now face to face with the question, 
What were the doctrines for which George Fox 
witnessed in his intrepid way, and which he gave 
to his followers, and which made them a factor in 



THE QUAKERS. 229 

civilization? We place the doctrine of the ituier 
light first ; all others flow from this. The doctrine 
of the universal inner light is this: Jesus Christ 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 
This Spirit of Christ in every man is sufficient to 
guide him. This Spirit of Christ in every man 
is not to be confounded with conscience ; the dis- 
tinction is clear between the human faculties and 
the divine Spirit. Conscience is an original fac- 
ulty of human nature; the Spirit of Christ is an 
added faculty. Instead of being identical with 
conscience, His purpose is to enlighten conscience. 
William Penn says, " God in Christ has placed a 
principle in every man to inform him of his duty 
and to enable him to do it." The way the inner 
light is perceived and increased is by waiting in 
silence for it before God and by meditation. The 
more it is honored and rightly used the more and 
brighter it shines. The inner light tells on the 
whole man ; it illumines and quickens the mental 
and spiritual faculties, and it beautifies and trans- 
figures the form and face. It makes the face calm 
and clear and crystalline, a ver}- transparency for 
a lighted soul. You can see what this doctrine 
carries in it. If God speaks to the soul, then the 
voice of God frees the soul from all bondage to the 
false opinions and prejudices and faiths of rfien. 
That is liberty indeed. If God speaks directly to 
every man, then every man has a distinct Individ- 



230 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

uality and Is an independent personality. It is out 
of the consciousness of this fact that democracy 
is born. Tliis consciousness, when nurtured and 
grown, makes an American citizen of the highest 
type; it breaks every human shackle, it quickens 
and deepens the sense of personal responsibility, for 
it brings God into every life and makes Him the 
sole authority. My fellow-men, give my country 
a people whose supreme desire and object in life 
are to reach the mind of God in all things, and you 
give it a people in whose hands the interests of the 
Republic will be perfectly safe : " For where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 

The experience which George Fox had with the 
clergy of his day gave origin to the mode of wor- 
ship which he left his followers. In the midst of 
his religious perplexities he sought light from the 
clergy, but found none. The clergy were useless 
to him, so he protested against hireling ministers 
and dispensed with their services. In his journal 
he says, " Being at Oxford and Cambridge does not 
make a man fit to be a minister of Jesus Christ." 
George Fox protected his people against two things 
— ministers and choirs. He substituted the inner 
light for the clergy, and he put his foot upon the 
choir and buried it out of sight. He arranged for 
fhe assembling of his followers on the Sabbath to 
wait for the Spirit and His message. If the Spirit 
gave np message, thexfi was nothing said, and the 



THE QUAKERS. 231 

time of the assembly was spent in golden silence. 
Both Charles Lamb and John G. Whittier speak 
the praise of these silent Sabbath services. Charles 
Lamb writes of the power of the stillness of the 
meeting : " I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who 
came with the avowed intention of disturbing the 
quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in 
a moment a new heart, and presently sit down in 
peace among the Friends to let God talk to his 
heart." Whittier writes: 

" And so I find it well to come 
For deeper rest to this still room, 
For here the habit of the soul 
Feels less tlie outer world's control. 
The strength of mutual purpose pleads 
More earnestly our common needs ; 
And from the silence multiplied 
By these still forms on either side, 
The world that time and sense have known 
Falls off and leaves us God alone." 

George Fox had a profound sense of the length 
and breadth of the love which God had for man- 
kind, and this made him the philanthropist he was. 
" All men are members of the family of the All- 
father and are brothers." In his journal he says, 
" I saw the infinite love of God." God's love to 
man inspired his love to man. To him brother- 
hood meant the opportunity of doing good to all 
men ; hence he inaugurated help for the helpless, 
and led in prison reforms and charities, and in the 



232 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

organization of societies for the emancipation of all 
human brothers in slavery ; hence he inaugurated 
movements looking to the abolition of the horrid 
and ungodly practice of brother man shooting 
down brother man ; hence he protested against 
imprisonment for debt and against the infliction 
of capital punishment for minor crimes. From the 
brotherhood of man he evolved, under the teach- 
ing of the Spirit, the doctrine of human equality. 
He made woman the equal of man, and to estab- 
lish her equality gave her her full half of the 
meeting-house. He argued, if men are equal, 
why should some be greeted with idolatrous titles, 
and receive obeisance from others, and be addressed 
in flattering pronouns? With him every brother 
man stood for just one, and that one was no better 
than his neighbor; hence he refused to doff his hat 
to any man, or address any man as " your Rever- 
ence," "your Holiness," "your Grace," "your 
Honor; " hence he called men by their Christian 
name, treating all alike. William Penn, following 
his example, addressed even King Charles H.- as 
" Friend Charles." There was democracy in that. 
Hence he introduced the use of the pronouns 
" thee " and " thou " into conversation as a protest 
against caste. William Penn has built up a gram- 
matical argument for the use of these pronouns. 
"Thee" and " thou" are singular pronouns ; "you" 
is the plural pronoun. Why should any single man 



THE QUAKERS. 233 

be addressed as though he were plural — as though 
he were a regiment in one? A plural pronoun 
used in the place of a singular pronoun is a species 
of flattery for the purpose of magnifying a man or 
a woman. Recognizing that man is the brother 
of man, George Fox labored to promote honesty 
and truthfulness between man and man. This led 
him to secure a fixity of price for goods in all the 
trades, a custom which is now established. This 
led to simplicity of speech in conversation. He 
argued for the abolition of the oath, for the reason 
that he would have every word uttered by man as 
true as an oath. That honesty and truthfulness 
might be made easy, he argued for an all-round 
simplicity of life, and protested against extravagance 
and waste and vanity and idle luxury and the sense- 
less change of fashion. Such was George Fox and 
such were the doctrines and practices which he con- 
tributed to civilization. The man himself was one 
grand declaration of independence, and he was that 
fully one hundred years before Thomas Jefferson 
penned, the American Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. He issued declaration of independence 
after declaration of independence, all more radical 
than Jefferson's. His plainness of dress was a 
declaration of independence from the despotism of 
fashion and from the extravagance of the privi- 
leged classes. His employment of the singular 
pronouns and of the Christian names of men was 



234 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

a declaration of independence from the spirit of 
caste. Fixity of price in traffic was a declaration 
of independence from the cupidity of the grasping 
trader. Arbitration as a method of settlement of 
all international disputes was a declaration of in- 
dependence from the monstrous iniquity of war. 
The doctrine of the itmer light was a declaration 
of independence from the dogmatism of sects and 
traditions, and from man-made and self-elected 
authorities. George Fox was a magnificent free- 
man, and he introduced into the world of thought 
and life that genius of liberty which was calculated 
to make every other man a freeman like himself. 

How did these legacies which George Fox con- 
tributed to America reach America ? He brought 
them himself. The man himself trod the very 
ground we to-day tread. He traveled through the 
American colonies for the express purpose of as- 
serting himself and his gospel of liberty. After he 
had worked out his mission here he went back to 
England to find a grave, and there he died, saying, 
" I am clear, I am clears And was he not clear? 
What man ever left the world having done his 
duty more fearlessly, or having declared more com- 
pletely all the counsel of God as he understood it, 
or having given the world grander ideals for the 
coming civilization? 

But the principles of George Fox came to Amer- 
ica not only in the person of George Fox himself; 



THE QUAKERS. 235 

they came also in the person of his many followers, 
who settled in all the colonies, but notably in Mas- 
sachusetts and Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. 
In most of the colonies they had patiently to 
work their way into recognition. This was espe- 
cially so in Massachusetts. The first thing which 
met the Quakers there was persecution, and that 
from the holy Puritans. This is one of the stains 
which rest on the memory of the Puritans. It is 
vain to try to excuse it, for it cannot be excused ; 
it can only be admitted and apologized for. In 
former years I offered my service to the Puritans 
and made a special plea in their defense, but I now 
beg leave to withdraw from the case. I once 
uttered and published the following words: " But 
what have we to say concerning the Puritans' treat- 
ment of Quakers ? We have this to say : that even 
in the harsh measures, as they dealt with these, 
they were the progressives of their age, and were 
the most merciful people of that century. The 
Quakers in that day were not the ideal people who 
walk the pages of our novels to-day, and with 
whom we instinctively fall in love. They were 
not Friend Ohvia and Hannah Mettelane and 
Roger Pryor, the Quaker characters and heroes 
of Mrs. Amelia Barr's charming book. No ; they 
were loud-voiced people, disturbers of the peace, 
denunciatory in their language, rudely behaved. 
Two of the women, Lydia Wardwell and Deborah 



236 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Wilson, walked the streets of Boston unclad, and 
tried to pass off that conduct as witnessing for God. 
The Puritans knew better than that, and put them 
behind the bars of the prison out of sight. Thomas 
Newhouse rushed into the Old South Church with 
two glass bottles in his hand, which he wildly 
dashed together and in pieces before the affrighted 
congregation, crying, ' Thus will "the Lord break 
you all in pieces.' When the governor of the colony 
walked the street the Quakers used to turn and 
hoot at him to show their contempt for govern- 
ment. The Puritans would not have persecuted 
Quakers of the type of to-day ; they would not 
have persecuted our poet, John G. Whittier. The 
Quakers have improved beyond the need of perse- 
cution. Mary Dyer was hung upon Boston Com- 
mon in front of my old church, but Mrs. Dyer was 
hung because she wanted to be. She wanted to 
hang ; it was her way of giving her testimony, and 
she refused to take no for an answer. They sent 
her out of the city scot-free, but she came back and 
acted worse than ever in order to compel the Puri- 
tans to hang her. Her hanging was a piece of pure 
gallantry upon the part of the Puritan gentlemen. 
There were four thousand Quakers imprisoned in 
England at one time, but only a handful were im- 
prisoned in New England." 

I have just been reading " The Pioneer Quakers " 
and "The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts," two 



THE QUAKERS. 237 

valuable books published by my friend, Richard P. 
Hallowell, of Boston, and I have found that the 
Puritans did persecute men just as pure and as sweet 
as John G. Whittier. They persecuted Nicholas Up- 
shal. And they did publicly expose the sacred per- 
sons of women as right-minded as Friend Olivia and 
Hannah Mettelane, and without mercy cut their flesh 
to the bone with the cruel lash. The Puritans, who 
desecrated temples and destroyed the finest works of 
art, are not the people to condemn others for rude- 
ness, are not the people to bore the tongues of Qua- 
kers with red-hot irons, and cut off their ears, and 
brand their flesh, and strip them naked and pub- 
licly scourge them, for the crime of rudeness. Mr. 
Hallowell shows that where the Quakers went to 
an extreme in giving emphasis to their protest, a 
reason for their extreme can be found in the 
effects of the cruel treatment which they ante- 
cedently received. In some cases the cruelties 
inflicted had unbalanced them mentally. The 
Quakers used no force ; theirs was the strength of 
the martyr nature. On behalf of the Quakers I 
instance the letters which they wrote in their pris- 
ons, and the words which they spoke on the gallows, 
and the prayers which they offered for forgiveness 
of their murderers. I put these in the deadly paral- 
lel column with the Puritans' cruel laws and brand- 
ing-irons and knotted whips and public gallows, and 
then leave the decision of the case to posterity. 



238 MAKERS OP THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

There Is this to be said for the Puritans : a popu- 
lar reaction set in against persecution, and by this 
means Puritanism rectified itself. The reaction 
came from such outspoken men as the Puritan sea- 
captain whose story John G. Whittier forcefully re- 
lates in a poem pertaining to the dark colonial days. 
Cassandra Southwick, a Quaker maiden of Salem, 
being unable to pay a fine of ten pounds imposed 
upon her because she would not attend a Puritan 
church, was sentenced to be taken to the island 
of Barbadoes and sold into bondage. When the 
sheriff asked the captain of the ship to transport 
the prisoner, and put money in his pocket by act- 
ing as agent in the sale, the old sailor growled back 
his answer Hke the roar of the sea : 

" Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold, 
From keel-piece to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold. 
By the living God who made me, I would rather in your bay 
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear tliis child away." 

It was ringing voices like that which put an inter- 
dict upon Puritan whips and irons and gallows. 

The Quaker power in America reached its height 
in the coming of William Penn and in the establish- 
ment and life of the colony of Pennsylvania. 
William Penn was second only to George Fox as 
a Quaker influence. He came to America in the 
ship called Welcome, in 1682. The JVe/co me added 
another ship to the grand historic ships which 



THE QUAKERS. 239 

proudly rode the sea of American life. One could 
write American history if he but told the story of 
the famous ships which brought the famous men of 
the past to our continent. What a fleet that was 
which sailed the American seas! The Santa 
Maria, the Good Speed, the Half -moon, the May- 
floiver, the Swallow, which brought the first Qua- 
kers, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, and the Wel- 
come, which brought William Penn. 

The territory of Pennsylvania was given to 
William Penn by Charles II. in lieu of money 
owed his father by the crown. The land was his 
to do with as he wished, and he devoted it to 
working into life a Quaker commonwealth. There 
was no man better fitted to establish such a com- 
monwealth than William Penn. He had paid a 
large price for the privilege of being a Quaker, 
and this made him a man to be trusted. He sac- 
rificed the friendship of his home ; his father said 
of him, " William has become a Quaker or some 
such melancholy thing." He had ability; he was 
educated at Oxford. He was democratic in spirit ; 
his definition of a free government shows this. 
" Any government," he said, " is free where the 
people are a party to the laws enacted." He was 
a kindred spirit to John Bright, the Quaker states- 
man of Great Britain, who for a whole generation 
was a leading spirit in the great movements of his 
country, and who was always on the right side. 



240 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

John Bright got his principles from William Penn. 
An analysis of his public life will show the Quaker 
principle of civil life to be this : political power is 
rightly exercised only when it is possessed by the 
consent of the governed, and is used for the wel- 
fare of the community according to the permissions 
of the moral law. This principle guided William 
Penn when he organized his colony. He gave it 
a constitution and laws full of the genius of human- 
ity and full of equal justice. He allowed all reforms 
to be pushed within its territory. There was not 
one good Quaker thing which did not flourish in it. 
Here the Indians were treated as brothers and here 
they acted brotherly in return. The colony was a 
temperance colony ; it was an anti-war colony ; it 
was a colony noted for its religious toleration. For 
over one hundred years the Quakers controlled it. 
Its homes were full of sweetness and strength. The 
colony was one of the greatest powers in the Ameri- 
can Revolution, and furnished such leaders as Logan 
and MifiBin and Dickinson, all of them Quakers. 
Benjamin West, the great painter, was born here 
in a Quaker home ; he was one of the founders of 
the Royal Academy of Great Britain. The liberty 
of thought granted by this colony bore its products 
and brought the colony honor. It enabled it to grow 
into what it is to-day, the second State in the Union. 
The colony gave the country the city of Phila- 
delphia, the one city of the Republic which rivals 



THE QUAKERS. 241 

Boston in old colonial landmarks, just as in olden 
time it rivaled Boston in that leadership which in- 
augurated the American Revolution. It gave the 
country Independence Hall; it was the home of 
the Continental Congress. Here was framed and 
debated and publicly signed the Declaration of 
Independence itself, which made the American 
Revolution an historic fact. All this took place 
not on Puritan soil, but on Quaker soil, and all this 
took place where it did because there was more 
freedom of thought in Philadelphia than there was 
in Boston. 

One thing we cannot fail to notice in this his- 
torical study, and that is the general acceptance 
by our Republic of the principles and practices of 
the Quakers as these relate to civil life. The ac- 
ceptance of each of their humane measures is a vic- 
tory for humanity as well as for their testimony. 
They have reaped triumphs all the way from the 
abolition of capital punishment for minor offenses 
to the abolition of African slavery. One victory 
more remains for them to win, and that is the 
abolition of war and the substitution in its place of 
international arbitration. That victory is already 
more than half won, for men everywhere in Chris- 
tendom are beginning to argue on the right side. 
Their triumph will some day be complete, be- 
cause their aim is right. It is the ultimatum 
of Christianity. It has on its side also the verdict 



242 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of history. The progress of civilization does not 
ride in a powder-cart. Take England as an ex- 
ample : has its progress been the career of the 
powder-cart? Let Hugh Price Hughes, an Eng- 
lishman, answer the question. He writes : " The 
most splendid portion of Great Britain, which is 
now known as the United States of America, was 
that great Christian commonwealth, to which the 
future of the world belongs, founded or built up 
by the army ? Every one knows that, on the con- 
trary, it was founded by the God-fearing Puritan 
fathers, who crossed the broad Atlantic not to 
erect an empire upon bloodshed, but to secure 
liberty of conscience, which the soldiery of the 
odious Stuart kings refused them at home. Our 
soldiers had nothing whatever to do with this the 
most splendid colony, except to deprive us of it. 
If it had not been for the despotic temper of the 
military party of England the American colonists 
would not have revolted .and the United States 
would have been an integral part of the British 
empire to-day. The army of Britain will never be 
able to compensate us for the loss of America." 
That is precisely to our point ; that is history ; that 
is invincible logic. 

But tills is not all that is to be said relative to 
England. The best part of Canada is not the part 
which was conquered in war, which was taken by 
the army from France ; that part is the least 



THE QUAKERS. 243 

Anglicized of all Canada and it is the most un- 
stable part of the Canadian structure; it is the 
disturbing, perilous element. Nor is this all. Eng- 
land does not owe her colonies in South Africa to 
her army ; they were won by the enterprise and 
energy of travelers and traders and missionaries. 
She does not owe her colonies in the Fiji Islands 
to her army and navy. Veteran missionaries de- 
serve the credit there. They took neither gun- 
powder nor brandy with them ; they took Bibles 
and the implements of industry ; they took swords 
and spears beaten into plowshares and pruning- 
hooks. The only place where British militarism 
was powerful was in India; but who can tell the 
hundreds of thousands of British lives and the hun- 
dreds of millions of British treasure that India has 
cost England? To-day the army plays a subor- 
dinate part in India. English tenure would cease 
to-morrow if it rested only or mainly on the sword. 
It rests on the justice of English rule and on the 
influence of the missionaries of the cross of Christ, 
the Prince of Peace. 

The teaching which we find in English history 
adverse to the claims of war we find true in 
American history. The most of Americans, I 
verily believe, imagine that it was the Revolution- 
ary War which made us a republic. Our most pro- 
found dangers only began when the Revolutionary 
War ceased. There was imminent danger lest the 



244 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

colonies should throw themselves against one an- 
other in the shock of war, and devour one another. 
It was the statesmanship of Franklin and Washing- 
ton and Jefferson and the Adamses which made us 
a republic and which saved the colonies from them- 
selves. Let any one read John Fiske's " Critical 
Period of American History " and he will be as- 
sured of the truth of this. What was the critical 
period of America's history ? Fiske sa5'S it was the 
period which immediately followed the American 
Revolution. It was the triumphs won in the time 
of peace which made us most and made us per- 
manently. 

What we find true in England and in America 
we find true also in Italy. We all admire Garibaldi 
and praise him for what he did for Italy ; but what 
is the story of Garibaldi? Garibaldi himself did 
not emancipate Italy with the sword ; he was not 
the sole emancipator of Italy. His volunteers 
would have been speedily crushed by the Austrian 
army had not Mazzini, the Italian patriot and co- 
worker, changed the thoughts and hearts of the 
people by his powerful appeals and red-hot logic. 
Besides this. Garibaldi's greatest victory was won 
without the shedding of a single drop of blood. I 
refer to his victory at Naples. He entered Naples 
unarmed and in an open carriage. When the 
artillerymen of the cruel despot were commanded 
to blow Garibaldi into the air, the great Italian rose 



THE QUAKERS. 245 

silently and opened his red shirt to receive the 
deadly volley into his heart. The effect of that 
act was electric and irresistible. The artillerymen 
flung down their fuses and shouted, " Long live 
Garibaldi!" "Long live Italy!" That was the 
way Garibaldi's greatest victory was won and that 
was the way Naples was made free. 

In the study of history I have come to the con- 
clusion voiced by Emilio Castelar, the most elo- 
quent and noble man of all Spain, the man who 
would give Spain to-day a republic worthy of the 
name if his country would only let him and if the 
military despotism were not in the way. Castelar 
says : " National freedom can be permanently won 
only by pacific means. Soldiers are as unfit to 
build the temple of freedom as the warrior David 
was to build the temple of God. Those who de- 
pend upon the sword shall perish by the sword." 

In America we are far on toward the acceptance 
of arbitration as a substitute for war, and the great 
thinkers of the world are with us. Arbitration to- 
day has its laurels. The settlement of the Alabama 
claims — that is a laurel ; the treaty between the 
United States and France, with its arbitration 
clause — that is a laurel ; a like treaty with Switzer- 
land — that is a laurel ; the present hopeful negotia- 
tion with Great Britain for a treaty of the same 
import — that too is a laurel ; the International 
Arbitration Conference, which met in our land 



246 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

this very year — that is a laurel. This conference 
issued a magnificent address to the world last June, 
demanding law for war in the settlement of all 
difficulties between nations. The clock of time is 
getting ready to strike the hour which the poet 
laureate foretells, when 

"The war-drums will throb no longer, and the battle-flags be 
furled, 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." 

The part which the Quakers have taken in build- 
ing the American Republic makes clear this two- 
fold way in which patriots can effectively serve 
their country : 

I . By uttering an emphatic protest against all 
destructive evils. 

History can ask no grander illustration of the 
power of protest than Quaker life on American soil. 
Why is it that there is no African slavery to-day 
within our borders? It is because the Quakers as 
early as 1688 issued ihoir p7-o test against African 
slavery, and kept it issued until the nation was 
educated up to the Emancipation Proclamation. 
But mark this: they invested their all in their 
protest. They meant it, and they made the Ameri- 
can people feel that they meant it. Their protest 
was strong with the moral strength of a splendid 
personality and a consistent life; its power was 
moral. 



THE QUAKERS. 247 

2. By keeping before one's country uplifting and 
inspiring ideas. 

We call guns, swords, powder, forts, ironclads, 
and armies national powers ; the Quakers have 
taught us that there are powers beyond these. 
The powers beyond these are right thoughts, high 
ideals, holy visions, righteous principles, burning 
aspirations. These make a strong manhood and a 
pure womanhood, and such manhood and woman- 
hood make a strong and pure state. The men and 
women who have these thoughts, ideals, visions, 
principles, aspirations, go straight to God for them ; 
they are exponents of God. The ideal civilization 
exists only in the plan of God. 

This is the message of the Quaker fathers to the 
patriotic sons of America: If you would render 
your country the highest service and lead it for- 
ward to the millennial age, be an intellect to your 
country, think for it ; be a conscience to your 
country, make moral decisions for it ; and think 
and decide within the lines of God's holy law. If 
you would render your country the highest service, 
be the Lord's prophet to your country ; dream 
dreams for it and see visions for it. It was Socrates 
and Plato and Aristotle, men of thought and of 
vision, who were the promoters and conservators 
of the national strength of Greece; and it was 
Samuel and Elijah and Isaiah, the prophets of the 
Lord, who were the chariots of Israel and the horse- 



248 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

men thereof. Be to the American Republic what 
these men were to the kingdoms of which they 
were citizens. Hold up ideals before the people 
as they did, and then, like them, you will attain a 
civilization embodying your ideals; then you can 
look up into the face of your God and address 
Him in the words which the sweet Quaker poet of 
America left with his fellow-citizens as an ideal 
and a vision : 

" Suffice it now. In time to be 
Shall holier altars rise to Thee ; 
Thy church one. broad humanity. 

" White flowers of love its walls shall climb, 
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime ; 
Its days shall all be holy time. 

" A sweeter song shall then be heard — 
The music of the world's accord 
Confessing Christ, the inward Word! 

" That song shall swell from shore to shore, 
One hope, one faith, one love restore, 
The seamless robe that Jesus wore." 



VIII. 
OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 



249- 



VIII. 

OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS* 

In celebrating Forefathers' Day, it is not really 
the day that we honor, but a progress ; a progress 
which the day registers. We celebrate the genesis 
and the evolution of a great Republic. The ob- 
ject of such a service as this is not the study of a 
certain 2 1st day of December, but a study of great 
men, and a study of great women who are always 
back of great men. We meet in this service 
to bring forward principles, causes, characters, 
destinies, about which it will do us good to talk. 
Bacon says, " Histories make men wise " ; we are 
in search of histories. Webster says, " There is a 
moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors 
which elevates the character and refines the heart," 
we are in search of that moral and philosophical 
respect. We have the heritage of a grand national 
ancestry in which grand men and women share, 
share and share, alike. We have met to brighten 
the memories of this ancestry. We are in search 
of knowledge which makes for patriotism, and 
which raises the estimate of the price paid for our 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn,- at a Forefathers' Day Service. 

253 



254 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

country. It has been said that there are millions 
in our world who have been rendered physical 
and moral paupers by the sins of their ancestors,- 
and doomed to be hewers of wood and drawers of 
water ; the despotic governments which their an- 
cestors established and supported have stunted 
them, and have made them thin-blooded and low- 
browed ; all back head and no forehead ; we have 
met to-night to thank God that this is not so with 
the United States. It was sifted seed that was 
planted in this land of ours, and it is in conse- 
quence of this that we behold the grand harvest 
which belongs to us to-day. We have now our 
own poets, historians, inventors, publicists, jour- 
nalists, statesmen, jurists, scientists, ministers, and 
our grand women ; and these are quoted the world 
over. We wish to impress upon ourselves that 
the glory of the fathers is their children ; and we 
wish to so school ourselves in that which consti- 
tutes the grandeur of nations, that the father's 
legacy shall run no risk of dishonor by being com- 
mitted to our hands. Our aim is to be true de- 
scendants of the haloed heads of American history ; 
and with this aim before us, we come to-night, to 
put ourselves under the spell of their heroic story. 
We recognize that the age of luxury has some- 
thing to learn from the age of homespun. That 
age has principles to give which are everlasting, 
and an example to set before us, which if followed 
will produce a loyalty to God and self, that will 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 255 

add to the lustre of our Republic. We wish to 
be, not only the lineal descendants of " The 
Makers of America," we wish to be also their 
logical and spiritual descendants. It is as Wendell 
Phillips has said: "Thee and thou, a broad- 
rimmed hat, and a plain coat are not George Fox 
in our century. You will recognize George Fox 
in him who rises from the lap of artificial life, 
flings away its softness, and startles you by the 
sight of a grand man." We may not have the 
pedigree of the body, but we can, and we ought 
to have the pedigree of the mind, the character, 
and the moral personality of our civic fathers. 
This higher pedigree is reached by keeping the 
forefathers in constant and reverential remem- 
brance, and by constantly cultivating a sense of our 
responsibility to them. We have a trust to keep, 
and they have given it to us. We have their 
name to guard. Now the thought of this cannot 
but be a stimulus to us as we seek to live our 
lives. Who can doubt, for example, that the 
younger Pitt was sustained in his masterly course 
by the name and fame of his illustrious father ? 
Or who can doubt that John Quincy Adams was 
inspired in doing his duty in life by the memory 
of his father's and mother's families? He writes 
in his diary, " The moment I knew that I bore 
the name of Quincy, given me by my mother, I 
felt a call to act up to the demands of that name." 
Thus the Puritan mother did a grand work often 



256 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

by the very names which she gave her boys. By 
perpetuating family names, she built up an aristo- 
cracy of historical association which was whole- 
some and inspirational ; and which resulted in 
self-respect, and in loyalty to what was expected 
from one's family. Names are like old ancestral 
homesteads, they are eloquent memorials ; they 
are educators in patriotism and in religion. Take 
the Winthrops, who have come down to us 
through eight generations, and you have an illus- 
tration in point. 

But we have a special object before us to-night ; 
an object different from that which we sought on 
previous forefather services, and we must not lose 
sight of it. Our object is this : to emphasize the 
fact that there were foremothers as well as fore- 
fathers. These did a grand work ; these made 
magnificent sacrifices; these contributed sublime 
enthusiasms; these exercised a victorious faith; 
these saw glorious visions; and these endured 
appalling sufferings, all of which entered into the 
conception, and the making, and the nurturing, 
and the developing of the American Common- 
wealth. I wish to set these foremothers before 
the public for honor and for imitation, and as 
an appeal to the American women of our day. I 
wish through them to reach our women, and stimu- 
late them in their duties as patriots. I wish also, 
by setting them forth for admiration, to correct the 
mistaken estimate which American men have of 



O UR AMERICA N FORE MO THERS. 257 

the value of the worth and work of women in com- 
parison with their own. Their work is different 
from man's, but it is just as necessary, and as im- 
portant, and as efificient. 

Mrs. Oliphant, that large-minded woman, in her 
essay on " The Grievances of Women," takes the 
ground that all the differences about the legal 
rights of women are of minor importance alongside 
of the universal underestimation of the work which 
women actually do. Since the world began, they 
have never got credit for doing the share of the 
world's work which has fallen to them and which 
they have faithfully performed. If that grievance 
be correct, it is a burning shame ; and it is quite 
time that there should be a change, and that men 
should become honest in the book-keeping of the 
home, the church, and the state. 

Woman came into the world at the start be- 
cause man was a failure without her, and she stays 
in the world because his completeness requires her 
to join him in all his works and callings. I boldly 
assert that it was woman who made the American 
colonies a success, and I fearlessly appeal to his- 
tory for the proof of what I assert. Take the two 
leading colonies and place them side by side : the 
Jamestown colony and the Plymouth colony ! 
The Plymouth colony was a success from the 
beginning ; the Jamestown colony came within 
one point of being an out-and-out failure. " Was 
there a reason for this difference between these 
17 



258 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

two colonies ? " Yes. "Were not the two colo- 
nies precisely alike ? " No. " They both came 
from England ! " That is true, but the Jamestown 
colony lacked this, viz., the presence, and the 
patience, and the love, and the endurance, and the 
elevating power of a heroic Christian womanhood. 
The Pilgrims of the Mayjlozver brought their 
wives and children with them. They had the 
home in their colony. Woman makes the home, 
and the home makes the church and state. If 
Plymouth Rock had been minus the home, the 
future of New England would have been changed. 
The men of the Jamestown colony who came 
over to Virginia left their women in England. 
There was not a single woman in the whole 
colony ; and this is the reason that they quarreled 
and were decimated. ' What could you expect 
from one hundred and two old bachelors, a com- 
munity of bachelors? It is as much as society 
can do to get along with one here and another 
there in the community. A colony of bachelors 
never carried any cause on earth to a successful 
conclusion, and never will. Benjamin Franklin 
calls an old bachelor " the odd half of a pair of 
scissors." Nothing is more worthless than the odd 
half of a pair of scissors. But you say " the Vir- 
ginian colony still exists and that it is part of the 
United States just as much as the Plymouth col- 
ony is. It contributed mightily to the formation 
of our great Republic. It gave us Patrick Henry, 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 269 

the orator of the American Revolution. It gave 
us Thomas Jefferson, the penman of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. It gave us George Wash- 
ington, the Father of our Country. It gave us 
James Madison, who wrote our Nation's Constitu- 
tion." All true. But do you know why the James- 
town colony continued to exist and was able to 
give these men to the nation ? Woman was the 
reason. First, young Pocahontas, the beautiful 
daughter of the Indian chief, kept the colony from 
starvation, according to the testimony of Capt. 
John Smith, whose life she saved ; she afterward 
married into the colony and became the ancestress 
of the noted Randolph family of Virginia ; and 
second, twelve years after the colony came to 
Virginia, England sent over one hundred of the 
handsomest young women of the land to join the 
colony ; and these became the wives of the James- 
town men, and saved and made the colony, and 
gave it its future. It was when the colony re- 
ceived the home that it took on a new life. This 
is one point scored for the mothers and wives of 
the forefathers, and it is pure, straightforward, 
undeniable history. This point is the contribution 
of the Jamestown colony, the oldest of all the 
American colonies. 

But the Plymouth colony is not one whit be- 
hind that of Jamestown in setting forth the in- 
fluence of woman. Look at the passenger list of 
the Mayflower and read the names of those holy 



2G0 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

women written there by the side of the Pilgrim 
Fathers. Was that perilous trip easier for the 
women than it was for the men? I look upon 
the names of those nineteen wives and seven 
daughters on the Mayflozver passenger list as 
carrying in them a grandeur, and as standing for 
as great a heroism, as the names of the heroic men 
affixed to the Declaration of Independence. 

Not a single man died for affixing his name to 
the Declaration of Independence; but many a 
woman died because she put her name upon the 
passenger list of the Mayflower. Both meant 
battles with hardships, and both meant battles for 
liberty. Concerning the Mayfloiver women, this 
beautiful tradition has come down to us, showing 
how much women were in the life of the early 
days: " The first foot that pressed the snow-clad 
surface of Plymouth Rock, December 2i, 1620, 
was the foot of the fair maiden, Mary Chillion ; 
and the last survivor of the Mayflower Pilgrim 
company was Mary Allerton, who lived to see the 
planting of twelve out of the Thirteen colonies 
which formed the nucleus of the United States." 

The early history of our country divides itself 
into two principal parts : the Pre-Revolutionary 
period, and the Revolutionary period. For the 
sake of convenience and also as a help to our 
memory, let us follow this division in speaking of 
the foremothers of the Republic. 

The Pre-Revolutionary woman of America was 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 261 

not the fashionable woman of 1901 ; wasp-waist; 
a creature of fads ; the physician's star patient ; 
beauty clad in a tailor-made costume ; the butter- 
fly of the palatial mansion. She was of another 
type. She was clad in homespun, and was her 
own tailor. Like Deborah and Mahitabel Nash 
she was a picturesque personality shod with snow- 
shoes and clad in bear-skins. Like Priscilla 
Mullens plying her spinning-wheel, she carried in 
her romance enough to give Longfellow his most 
exquisite poem on courtship. Her home was the 
log-cabin of the wilderness around which the 
bitter winds whistled, the hungry wolves howled, 
and the war-painted Indians gave their soul-pierc- 
ing whoop. She was a creature of solid quantity, 
a woman of weight. She was a woman who could 
and who did make a home. She was a woman of 
a family ; a mother of strong boys and blooming 
girls. She was a woman of all-around industry. 
Let me set her before you by a concrete case. 
I select Mrs. Sarah Knight as an average type of 
the Pre-Revolutionary woman. I select her be- 
cause she kept a diary which has been preserved 
and which gives us her autobiography. She was 
the daughter of Captain Kemble, of Boston, who 
obtained some notoriety by sitting in the public 
stocks of Boston for two full hours for the crime 
of " unseemly behavior." His unseemly be- 
havior was this : he was seen kissing his wife on 
the Sabbath upon the doorstep of his home just as 



262 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

he returned from a voyage of three years. From 
the diary of this woman we find that she was 
proficient in all the fireside and home industries 
of that day, and was good at soap-making, candle- 
making, sugar-making, cloth-making, butter- 
making, bread-making, clothes-making, and broom- 
making. Besides being a good housewife she was 
a good business woman, and made business trips 
from Boston to New York and back again on 
horseback. She also ran a tavern, taught school, 
owned and superintended a grist and flour mill, 
and speculated a little in Indian lands. 

Many are the thrilling tales told of the women 
of the Indian era of our country. On one occasion 
Miss Elizabeth Zane, of Fort Henry, ran the 
gauntlet of the Indian's fire, in order to secure a 
keg of powder, and by her nerve and heroism 
saved the whole settlement from massacre. On 
another occasion Mrs. Hendree, of Royalton, Vt., 
rescued fifteen captured children from the Indians 
at the risk of her life. Perhaps the greatest deed 
of daring, which has come down to us, was that 
of Hannah Duston, of Concord, N. H. She was 
a veritable Spartan. She despatched a whole 
Indian camp with a tomahawk and in this way 
secured her liberty, for she was a prisoner. Her 
story is told by Bancroft as one of the most daring 
feats in all Indian lore, and the city of Concord 
has erected a public monument to her name. As 
a rule, however, the life of woman, in those far- 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 263 

away Indian days, was not so much a life of 
thrilling adventures as it was one of loneliness, and 
exile, and continuous and wearing work and hard- 
ship from cold and hunger. Power to endure ! 
That was victory and success in those days. That 
was the demand in yonder age, and that demand 
the Pilgrim Mothers grandly met. Gail Hamilton 
in speaking of their endurance writes : " I am sick 
and tired of hearing the Pilgrim Fathers lauded 
to the skies, and feted and sainted, let us have no 
more of it. The era of the Pilgrim Mothers is 
due, and has come. Sing their praises; for they 
out-distance the Pilgrim Fathers a hundred times 
over. They not only endured the hardships and 
anxieties of that rough period, the cold and the 
hunger of Colonial life, the dangers which per- 
petually looked them in the face from the wrath 
of the savages ; but better than that, and harder 
than that, they endured the gruff old Puritan 
Fathers themselves, and put up with them, and 
made headway toward our glorious day in spite of 
them. To endure the Pilgrim Fathers themselves 
is heroism enough for women of any age." Some 
of the forefathers, like Roger Williams, were 
conscientiously contentious. Now when it is a 
man's religion to wear a long face, and look sour 
by way of protest, and hitch and fuss around 
generally as though things were all out of joint, 
and elbow everybody into giving him his place 
and his rights, that man's disagreeableness is dis- 



264 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

agreeably disagreeable. This scores another point 
for the mothers and wives of the forefathers ; they 
proved themselves able to endure the forefathers. 
But we must pass on to the women of the 
Revolutionary period. In this period history is 
fuller. The stories of women are better known ; 
and there are more of them. More grand women 
step out of hidden diaries, and private letters, and 
household traditions and become women of his- 
tory. But there are a great host yet, who have 
not stepped out. The heroic women of this 
period who became the mothers of the Republic 
were the daughters of the fourth generation from 
the mothers of the colonies. They were such 
women as Moll Pitcher, of Monmouth, who loaded 
and fired cannon, and who took Paul-Revere rides 
in the service of her country ; and Hannah Win- 
throp who was black with dust and smoke of 
Lexington, and Anne Elliot whom the British 
styled the " Beautiful Rebel " ; and Margaret 
Corbin who took her husband's place at the 
artillery in the battle at Fort Washington, and 
whom Congress afterward mentioned in its min- 
utes with honor, and whom it pensioned ; and 
Deborah Samson who fought for three years in 
the Continental Army, and was praised by Wash- 
ington and honorably discharged because she was 
wounded. But these were exceptional cases and 
I do not stop to give their history in detail. I 
am dealing now with women who served their 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 265 

country in a more womanly way, and through the 
ordinary channels. 

And here there step upon the stage, women 
like the mother of Benjamin Franklin, and Mary 
Washington who sleeps upon the banks of the 
Potomac honored by a monument reared to her 
memory by a grateful Republic. 

Two noted women of that time especially fill 
the eye of an admiring posterity. These are 
Mrs. Mercy Warren, sister of Jas. Otis, who gave 
her husband to fall in the battle for freedom ; and 
Mrs. Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams and 
mother of John Ouincy Adams. 

If you follow the life of Mrs. Warren through, 
you will have the whole history of the American 
Revolution. She was born in the times when the 
colonies were staunch in their adherence to the 
English Crown, and she lived through all the 
stages of alienation and revolt, until the battle of 
Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis made 
the new Republic an assured and a glorious cer- 
tainty. From the very start, she had an abiding 
faith that the Republic would live; but she knew 
that it could live only at the sacrifice of her 
husband, who was dearer to her than life ; this 
sacrifice she made. This intellectual woman was 
in intimate correspondence with Samuel and John 
Adams and with Jefferson. General Knox wrote 
Or^her, " I shall be happy to receive your counsels 
from time to time " ; and whenever she omitted 



266 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

to write John Adams, that great man wrote asking 
her the reason why. She was the first to suggest 
the doctrine of " Inherent Rights " which was at 
once accepted by our distinguished patriots as 
belonging to all mankind, and she was the first 
person to advise separation from the mother 
country as the only solution of the political prob- 
lem of the hour. She did this when the hearts 
of strong men quaked with fear. This was before 
the first drum-beat of the great democratic march 
had as yet sounded. It was she who made the 
Adamses the fearless advocates of this policy. 
Her letters to them are the documentary proofs 
of this. It was she who wrote the history of the 
American Revolution in the form of three large 
volumes. Rochefoucauld in his " Tour in the 
United States " says : " Seldom has a woman in 
any age acquired such ascendency by mere force 
of a powerful intellect, and her influence continued 
through life." 

Mrs. Abigail Adams was scarcely one whit be- 
hind Mrs. Warren in intellect and scholarship, 
or in heroism, or in the use of the pen. The two 
were intimate friends and acted and reacted upon 
each other. They advocated the same principles 
and pushed the same causes. As Mrs. Adams' 
husband was in public life, it fell to her lot to 
manage the home and the farm. There was no 
money in the public service of one's country dur- 
ing those days. So well did she manage home 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 267 

and farm that when Mr. Adams finished his 
second term as President of the United States, 
he and his wife had a comfortable estate to which 
to retire and upon which to spend their old age 
in comfort. Without this they would have been in 
sore and straightened circumstances. But she was 
more than a home-maker, she was a nation-maker. 
Her fine scholarship has left its mark upon many of 
the State papers which issued from her husband's 
hand. Her whole soul was in the cause of liberty, 
and she led in that cause. Before the Bell of 
Liberty on Independence Hall, Philadelphia, rang 
out upon the air of the New World the an- 
nouncement of American freedom, Abigail Adams 
issued her declaration of independence. In a 
letter written to her husband, who was a member 
of the Continental Congress sitting in Philadel- 
phia, she wrote one Sabbath day : " This intelli- 
gence (referring to the new aggressions of the 
British on American rights). This intelligence 
will make a plain path for you, though a danger- 
ous one. I could not join to-day in the petitions 
of our worthy pastor for a reconciliation between 
our no longer parent state, but tyrant state, and 
these colonies. Let us separate. They are un- 
worthy to be our brethren. Let us renounce 
them. And instead of supplications as formerly, 
for their prosperity and happiness, let us beseech 
Almighty God to blast their counsels, and bring 
to naught all their devices." 



2G8 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Here was a Declaration of Independence seven 
months in advance of that which the Liberty- 
Bell rang out July 4, 1776, and it was signed by a 
patriot woman. 

This is still another point scored for the 
mothers, and wives, and daughters of the fore- 
fathers. This point, viz. : Mercy Warren and 
Abigail Adams led in teaching the doctrine of 
*' inherent rights," and in advocating separation 
from a tyrannical throne, and in issuing America's 
Declaration of Independence. 

But Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Adams were not 
alone in their enlistment in the Cause of Freedom. 
They had hosts of followers, and co-workers. 
The women of their day rallied around them as 
leaders. And these organized them for service. 
The men organized and called themselves " The 
Sons of Liberty," the women organized and 
called themselves " The Daughters of the Rev- 
olution." They pledged themselves not to buy 
nor drink tea which was arbitrarily taxed and 
imported without American consent. This was 
an organized protest against the principle of tax- 
ation without representation, and it created and 
put back of the American Revolution an effective 
public sentiment. 

But there was a work done by American 
women prior to all that I have as yet mentioned ; 
prior to these protesting organizations of the 
Daughters of the Revolution, and prior to the 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 269 

patriotic letters written by Mrs. Warren and 
Mrs. Adams ; a work which made the Revolution 
both a possibility and a triumph : I mean the 
work of the American mothers in the American 
homes. These mothers, by being true to God 
and to their own conscience, trained those sons 
who sat in the Continental Congress and decreed 
liberty, and who fought in the Continental Army 
the battle fought for liberty. Those who fell in 
these battles were all mother's sons ; and mother's 
gifts to freedom. The Puritan mother was the 
pioneer of education. Where the church bell had 
never been heard to ring by the children, the 
Puritan mother every Sabbath gathered her boys 
and girls around her, and read to them from 
God's Book, and taught them the Westminster 
Shorter Catechism. Here by the fireside she 
taught them trust in God, and the duty and 
privilege of prayer to God. Here she sang with 
them the old psalms of the ages ; here she drilled 
them in the wonderful story of the Hebrew's 
strike for freedom ; and filled them with admira- 
tion for the grandeur of that God-led and God- 
guarded nation. Here she kept them in fellow- 
ship with the warriors and Psalmists and Pro- 
phets of God, who walk the pages of the Bible, 
and inspired and purified their lives with the 
beauties and sublimities of the Gospel and the 
Apocalypse. This was where woman's great 
work was done in Pre-Revolutionary and Revo- 



270 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

lutionary times. In the home she made the 
Sons of Liberty, and filled them with a sense of 
righteousness, and gave them the God of battles 
to lead them. The clarion voice of power which 
in 1776 woke the nation to its triumph was 
but the echo of the old Hebrew war-psalms which 
she sung with them, and the acting out in them 
and through them of Moses and Joshua and 
David and Elijah and Isaiah, the men of the 
Book whom she taught them to love and emulate. 
You may search all time through, but you will find 
no mother to excel the Puritan mother. She 
was better than the Puritan father. The stern 
Puritan father I imagine sought to break the will 
of the child, and thus control it ; that was his 
method of home-education, but the Puritan 
mother sought to control the will of the child, 
not by the rule of another person's will, but 
by the rule of the other faculties of the child. 
You may search all time through but you will find 
no wife to excel the Puritan wife. Hers was a 
h*fe of home-making, home-keeping, home-loving, 
and home-influencing. The Puritans had quaint 
ideals for their wives, and often their ministers 
from the pulpit preached upon these ideals, and 
urged them home upon the public. Here is a 
specimen excerpt from one of these divines. His 
sermon was upon the text " He that findeth a wife 
findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the 
Lord." In drawing a picture of a good wife he 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 271 

gives the following piece of wisdom: "A good 
wife should be like three things, which three 
things she should not be like. She should be 
like a snail, to keep within her house ; but she 
should not be like a snail to carry all she has 
upon her back. She should be like an echo, to 
answer when she is called ; but she should not be 
like an echo, always to have the last word. She 
should be like a town-clock, always keeping time 
with regularity ; but she should not be like a town- 
clock, speaking so loud as to be heard over all 
the town." The Puritan wife took as her ideal 
that superb thirty-first chapter of Proverbs and 
she lived by it. This is the reason she so ex- 
celled. Do you ask me what the Puritan fore- 
mother stood for ? I answer : she stood for strong 
convictions of apprehended truth ; she stood 
for an intense sense of the authority of righteous- 
ness ; she stood for incarnate conscience of the 
purest type ; she stood for a profound assurance 
of God's over-rule ; she stood for clear vision of 
things celestial; she stood for a magnificent 
optimism ; she stood for faith in the ultimate 
triumph of the right; she stood for a full in- 
spirational womanhood. She was the equation 
of all these. 

In shaping my sermon to a conclusion, I wish 
to make an appeal to all American women and 
call upon them to emulate the mothers and wives 
of the forefathers, who, conjointly with these 



272 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

forefathers, were makers of America. Remember 
that liberty is not a release from duty ; liberty is 
a burden ; liberty is an added responsibility. 

Women of America, it is yours to carry on the 
work which the foremothers began. America 
needs re-making, each generation ; and this fact 
assigns you your task. That you may meet your 
task and serve your country I call upon you to- 
night, in the first place : 

I. To realize the power which there is in a grand 
womanhood, and then in your own person to give 
such a womanhood to the American Republic. 

This is what the foremothers did. Where 
did they reach their knowledge of the power of 
womanhood? You ask the question that you 
may put yourselves under their tuition and reach 
their wisdom. I have said that they were lovers 
and daily students of the Bible, and I have inti- 
mated that they were especially fond of the 
closing book of the Bible, the Apocalypse. This 
is true. The Apocalypse captured them by its 
rhythmic cadences, its jeweled words, its pictorial 
scenes, its dramatic life, its thrilling songs, its 
heavenly glories, and its talking symbols. In its 
talking symbols they got their idea of the power 
of womanhood. The Apocalypse introduces two 
striking types of woman, and by these two types, 
shows that woman is full of power for good or 
for evil. There is the woman upon a scarlet 
colored beast full of the names of blasphemy, the 



OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 273 

seductive leader of evil in the world ; and there is 
the woman clothed with the sun, the moon under 
her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars ; 
a magnificent creature, the leader of the good in 
the world, and the mother of light. This is the 
woman who conquers in the name of God, and 
afterward appears as the Bride, the Lamb's wife, 
in raiment pure and white. Do you not feel 
the fascination of that ? Our foremothers felt it 
and they aimed at being "women clothed with 
the sun." Certainly no finer nor truer tribute was 
ever paid to the power of woman, than that found 
in this writing of John, which sets forth the final 
expression of sanctified society under the imagery 
of the Bride, the Lamb's wife. Let any woman 
live as the Bride of Christ and she will be a grand 
woman, and a national power. That is better 
than being one of the Four-Hundred, which is 
the ambition of so many women. It would take 
the whole Four-Hundred combined to equal such 
a woman. She is more than the Four-Hundred 
in one. She is the Four-Hundred intellectualized, 
practicalized, moralized, religionized, and spirit- 
ualized. Such a woman can rule the twentieth 
century and make watchwords for the twentieth 
century. Such a woman can make her nation 
the leading nation of the world. 

Women of America, that you may meet your 
task and serve your country, I call upon you in 
the second place : 
i8 



274 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

2. To build up and maintain for your country 
holy and loyal homes — elect families. 

There is a guardianship of woman, and to that 
the Republic tacitly commits the homes of our 
land. The foremothers accepted this trust and 
well they guarded it. Families constituted the 
strength of our nation in the beginning. The 
Adams family, the Hancock family, the Otis family, 
the Quincy family, the Washington family, the 
Jefferson family, the Budinot family : — a Republic 
of such families won in the battle for liberty be- 
cause it could not help but win. America needs 
families, and the women of America can give it what 
it needs. You can make the home ; you can put and 
keep God there, the Bible there, the Sabbath there, 
the social and the commercial and the political 
conscience there. You are by popular acclaim 
the presiding genius of the household. You can 
make the home just what you want it, that is if 
you put your heart and soul and will and con- 
science and religion into your home life ; that is 
if you put yourself there for all you are worth. 
American women make the home and you make 
the nation. Be like Pliny's wife, Avho was such a 
power in Pliny's home, and through Pliny such a 
power in the Roman State ; she made and ruled 
her home by loving the best. Pliny says of her, 
" She loved that which was immortal in me." 
Love that which is immortal in husband and 
children and work that up to perfection, and 



OUR AMERICAN FORE MOTHERS. 275 

crown that as the ruler in the home. Send that 
crowned out into society and out into the state. 

I have one exhortation more. Meet your task 
and serve your country : 

3. By cherishing and perpetuating the memory 
of the haloed head of the past. In other words, 
like Miriam of old, who served the Hebrew com- 
monwealth, " Strike the Cymbals." Praise what 
is good and make that popular praise patriotism ; 
praise virtue ; praise every victory for liberty ; 
praise right-doing ; praise the forefathers ; praise 
the foremothers; praise Him Who is King of 
kings and Lord of lords ; lead the nation in re- 
ligion and in the love and service of the One liv- 
ing and true God. " Strike the Cymbals " as a rec- 
ognition of the glory of the nation's past. "Strike 
the Cymbals " as a greeting to the coming glory 
of the nation's future. 

" A Glory shines before me 
Of what mankind shall be. 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 
A dream of man and woman, 
Diviner, but still human ; 
Solving the riddle old, 
Shaping the ' Age of Gold.' 
Ring, bells of unreared steeples, 
The joy of unborn peoples 1 
Sound, trumpets far-off blown, 
Your triumph is our own." 

— Whittibr. 

Her chUdren shall rise up, and call her blessed, Prov. xxxi. 28. 



I 



IX. 

THE OLD TIME MINISTER; OR, THE PULPIT 

IN THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN 

REPUBLIC. 



277 



IX. 

THE OLDTIME MINISTER; 

OR, 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE PULPIT IN THE MAK- 
ING OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC* 

We have met to-night to talk together about 
the American RepubHc ; to give God praise for 
its existence ; and to study those things which 
have made it, and which alone can perpetuate it, 
and develop into complete fulness its lofty ideals. 
In the American RepubHc we have before us a 
great fact. There is no greater fact on the globe. 
It is positively magnificent. It is magnificent in 
its rich and varied territory. It is magnificent in 
its national principles. It is magnificent in its 
holy freedom. It is magnificent in its republican 
institutions. It is magnificent in its swift and 
phenomenal growth. And it is magnificent in the 
world-wide, and uplifting influence which it is 
exerting in the midst of mankind. As we deal 
with it, we cannot help saying — " Here is a superb 
momnnent to somebody. IV/iose inonwnent is it ? 
Here ts a grand result : What was t/ie grand 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn, at a Forefathers' Day Service. 

281 



282 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

cause? Hozv is the American Republic to he ac- 
counted for ? What was the great factor in its 
building ? " 

The American Republic is a composite. It is. 
Different lands contributed to its constituency. 
They did. The best of the best races was built 
into it : the Huguenots of France are in it : so are 
the heroes of the Dutch Republic : so are the 
Puritans of England : and so are the sons of John 
Knox of Scotland. Yes, they are. But this 
does not explain the American Republic. Back of 
these facts comes in the leading question, What 
was it that brought these men here ? What was 
it that swayed their lives? What was it that 
fused them together as one man ? WJiat was it 
that gave them their common cause — the holy 
cause of freedom ? That is the question : and it is 
fundamental. Answer that question and you lead 
us at once and directly to the topic of this Service, 
and you explain the American Republic. // was 
religion. The Oldtime Minister was the leader of 
religion. To use the words of our text he was " a 
leader who led. " " For that the leaders took the 
lead in Israel, praise ye the Lord.** 

There are two queries with which we must deal 
right here, and that before we get into the heart 
of our subject, these are: 

First, What was the religion tv/uch zvas espoused 
and pushed by our forefathers, ajid out of which 
sprang the A merican Republic ? 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 283 

Second, What tvas their idea of a Minister as a 
leader of this religion ? 

Our forefathers were controlled by religion. 
They have left no uncertainty here. They have 
spoken for themselves. 

The Rev. John Higginson, son of Rev. Francis 
Higginson, the first minister of Salem, Mass., 
says, " If any man amongst us marks religion as 12, 
and the world as \i, let such an one know he hath 
neither the spirit of a true New England man, nor 
yet of a sincere Christian.'" 

The Republic which they gave us was cradled 
in a church ; for the Mayfiozvcr was nothing other 
than the church of Scrooby Manor. They have 
spoken for themselves. 

While on the Mayfiozvcr they drew up their 
articles of government and solemnly signed them 
on the day before they landed. This is the May- 
fiozt'cr compact, it reads : — 

" In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names 
are underwritten, having undertaken for the glory 
of God and the advancement of the Christian faith 
a voyage, — solemnly and mutually in the presence 
of God and one another, — combine ourselves into 
a body politic for our better ordering and jurisdic- 
tion : and furthermore in pursuance of the ends 
aforesaid, and by virtue thereof, to enact and 
found just and equal laws — unto which we prom- 
ise all due submission and obedience." This is 
the famous Mayflower Covenant, and it teaches 



284 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

that our forefathers were brought to this land by 
their religion, and for their religion : and that by 
and for their religion they set up a Civil Govern- 
ment. Now you know what their religion was. 
// was the religion of the Mayflower. It zvas Puri- 
tanism. It was Protestantism. I wish it to be 
distinctly understood that the American Re- 
public is the direct product and the noble ex- 
ponent of Protestantism. That is history. Con- 
fucianism could not have produced it. Moham- 
medanism could not have produced it. Romanism 
could not have produced it. These religious isms 
have had centuries in which to work ; but where 
have they produced the equivalent of tlie American 
Republic? China is not the equivalent : Turkey 
is not the equivalent : Spain is not the equivalent. 
Take Romanism for example. It is the best of 
all these Isms which I have mentioned. It could 
never produce the American Republic. It is a 
hierarchy, and it exists for that hierarchy. A 
hierarchy is the very antipode of Republicanism. 
A hierarchy governs the people and not the 
people the hierarchy. But Republicanism means 
government of the people, for the people, and by 
the people. I have been to the Headquarters of 
the Roman Hierarchy, the center of that great 
Church, the City of Rome, and I have seen just 
what the Hierarchy means for the people. Here 
the Roman Hierarchy has had its greatest opportu- 
nity. Here that great Church has worked un- 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 285 

checked and unlimited for centuries. Here is St. 
Peter's ; and here also is the Vatican, into which all 
the wealth of Christendom has been poured. Now 
what does a man see right on this Holy Spot? 
Something which it would be impossible to see if 
the Hierarchy existed for the people rather than 
for itself. He sees a teeming population steeped 
in, and kept in, gross ignorance : crowded together 
in abject poverty ; helpless : full of superstition : 
unkempt : incapable : ragged : half-fed : almost 
beyond the power of a social awakening. The 
sight fills an American freeman with a sense of 
horror. This is the population he sees, and it 
crowds up to the very gates of St. Peter's and 
the Vatican. You cannot reach St. Peter's and 
the Vatican without passing through it. Ro- 
manism could never produce the American Re- 
public. Never. It has had plenty of chances : but 
it has never improved a single chance. I am talk- 
ing history : for Romanism is a thing of history. 
It had a grand chance in England. England for a 
thousand years was under the Roman Hierarchy. 
That was a Millennium. A Millennium of what? 
A Millennium of superstition, stagnation, death. 
It was not the age of the reign of the people. It 
was not the age of the reign of liberty. It was 
not the era of the American Republic. That was 
England from the Sixth to the Sixteenth centu- 
ry ; — Papal England. Compare that England with 
England from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth 



286 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

century : — the England of Protestantism : the 
England of the Elizabethan and the Victorian 
periods : the England of Shakespeare, and Bacon, 
and Milton, and Cromwell, and Tennyson, and 
Gladstone. This last England is as near the 
American Republic as England has ever been : but 
this is the England of Protestantism. When I 
look at the steady decadence which has come to 
the nations which for centuries have been under 
the dominance and the making of the Roman 
Hierarchy, I say to myself as an American citi- 
zen, " When a nation is dying it has a right to im- 
peach its Church'' 

I have answered the first of our introductory 
questions : WJiat was the religion luJiich our 
Civil forefathers espoused, and pushed, and out of 
zuhicJi sprang the American Republic? It was 
Protestantism. I am ready now for our second 
introductory question : JVhat was their idea of a 
minister as a leader of this religion. 

Their idea here corresponded with the root 
idea of Puritanism which in a single phrase is — 
Individual freedom coupled with individual re- 
sponsibility. Individual freedom coupled with 
individual responsibility, that is the basal fact of 
Puritanism ; and from this fact springs the free 
church, and the free state, and the free school : 
the three institutions which are the glory of our 
Republic. According to this fundamental and 
root idea of Puritanism, viz. ; Individual Free- 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. ^?iri 

dom, coupled with Individual Responsibility, our 
forefathers maintained that it was every man's 
right to form his own religious opinions first-hand 
and directly from the Bible, and that in the 
matter of worship it was every man's right to go 
himself directly to God. Hence their idea of a 
gospel minister was not that of a priest: they 
repudiated the sacerdotal idea i7t toto. They 
were their own priests. They went to God them- 
selves in the first person, and not by proxy in the 
second person of a priest. They simply used the 
minister as a friend, and as a teacher and as a 
helper. He had no authority save the authority 
which they gave him. Save the authority which 
comes from the truth and from a fine personaHty 
and from the right. They believed in him and 
used him as one calculated and able to make them 
all the more effective as their own priest, and to 
give them more power to handle the Scriptures 
for themselves: and to make them more intel- 
ligent and self-sufficient in religion and in life. 
They believed in the equal rights of all believers 
before God. A leader : — a teacher : — that was the 
Puritan idea of a minister of the gospel : and that 
was what the Oldtime Minister was during the 
Colonial Era. 

The people had not the time requisite to devote 
to the proper study of the Book of God, so they 
chose ministers to do what the commonalty had 
not the time to do, and to give them the results 



288 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of their labors. It was their place to search out 
the truth for the people, live the truth before the 
people, make it attractive, vitalize it, exalt it : 
and thus secure its acceptance by the people, and 
thus make it a power in the community. They 
held that the people need education in religion, just 
as they need education along all other lines. And 
so they created their ministers that they might 
be educators in religion. In all this they were right. 
The people do need teachers in religion just as they 
need teachers in other things. For example, the 
musical element in human nature, in order for per- 
fection, demands a musical instructor. Your child 
with a musical taste sits at the instrument : the 
instrument is grand, and will respond to the touch 
of its keys, and set the air quivering with the de- 
lights of sweet sounds. The entrancing harmonies 
of Beethoven are before it on the open page. As 
these leaped from the soul of that great genius, 
and floated into the atmosphere and thrilled 
through human hearts, they were caught and cap- 
tured for after generations, and put into these 
notations on the musical page. Let these notes 
be given in the right way to the instrument, and 
the grand music of the grand genius of the past 
will live again, and thrill again. But how can 
your child reach that culture which will lift it to 
the plane of this music ? How can it reach the 
ability to resurrect Beethoven's creations? It 
must be brought under the power and spell of 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 289 

some living spirit, some competent teacher, some 
one who has every note of the composition im- 
printed on his soul : some one who has so entered 
into the spirit of Beethoven that he himself is a 
Beethoven. As the musical world needs leaders, 
so does the religious world. Men have before 
them the Book of God, as the child has before it 
the musical page. This Book has in it the thoughts 
of God imprisoned in human words, and these are 
waiting to be set free and started afresh into hu- 
man life, and translated anew into faith and love 
and self-sacrifice. These are to be reproduced by 
the grandest of all instruments, the immortal soul. 
If men are to give God's thoughts to the world in 
the form of a Psalm of Life, they must have the 
help of living teachers who live with the Book, 
who open their whole being to the incoming of the 
thoughts of God, and who have translated the 
substance of the Book into a rich experience. 
This was the way our forefathers reasoned, and 
in accordance with their reasoning they provided 
for themselves able, scholarly, spiritual men of 
God, and made them their leaders and instructors 
in divine things. These men kept religion alive 
among them, and made it the controlling power 
in their lives. These men evolved from the Divine 
Book the principles of civil and religious liberty 
and so enforced them, and so pushed them to the 
front, that the people accepted them and built 
them into the grand institutions which they have 
handed down to us their posterity. 
19 



290 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

We are now face to face with our subject, " The 
Oldtime Minister and the way in zvhich he helped 
in the making of the American Republic .'' 

In treating iny subject allow me to present 
four points in numerical order. In the first place : 

I. The Oldtime Minister helped to build up the 
American Republic by building up himself and thus 
giving to his country a fine personality and a fine life. 

He was a choice man in a choice community 
of men. He was a man of God. He was a typ- 
ical Puritan. Do you ask me what a typical 
Puritan is ? I answer you in the words of the 
French historian of literature, Taine, who thus 
describes the Puritan for his countrymen: " The 
Puritan was a man who lived constantly asking 
this question : ' Am I a just man ? If God who is 
perfect Justice should judge me at this moment, 
how should I appear? ' " That is a typical Puri- 
tan. A Puritan first of all lived his life with ref- 
erence to God: and above everything sought to 
be God-approved. He was a man on God's side 
in everything. This especially was the constant 
ideal which the Oldtime Minister entertained for 
himself. To realize this he fasted and prayed and 
examined himself, and repented, and studied the 
Bible, and applied truth to his own heart and life, 
and rededicated himself over and over to the 
work of the Lord. 

He was a scholar. For the most part he was a 
graduate of the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, 



THE OLD TIME MINIS TEH. 291 

Cambridge, or else of Harvard, or Yale, or Prince- 
ton. He could not have reasoned as Edwards 
did, or write books as Cotton Mather did, or 
preach as Whitefield did, if he had not been a 
scholar. I heard a gentleman in New York say 
that he had in his possession a copy of the Sept- 
uagint, i.e. the Alexandrian translation of the Old 
Testament in the Greek language, a symbol of 
culture, on the fly-leaf of which were the auto- 
graphs of no less than four of the noted ministers 
of the Colonial day. Increase Mather, Cotton 
Mather, Nathaniel Mather, Mather Byles, four 
generations. It had passed from one to the other 
and had been used by all. They all read it, for 
they all were scholars. 

The Oldtime Minister was a man of conviction 
and of courage. There was no half-faith with 
him. There was no compromise with him. There 
was no courting the favor of man with him. 
He fearlessly arrayed men before their own con- 
sciences ; he was the Judgment bar of God in the 
community. He preached the Word and held to 
the integrity of the Book from lid to lid. 

He was a hard worker. Joshua Moody wrote 
4000 sermons in his lifetime, and sermons then 
were no trifles. They were not twenty-minute 
affairs, with a leaning toward the side of mercy. 
They were two hours, and two-hours-and-a-half 
affairs. If you had said to those men " Twenty 
minutes to raise the dead in," they would have 



292 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

replied " It cannot be done in that time. " And 
it cannot. The man who cannot stand more than 
a twenty-minute sermon is not yet alive spiritually. 
He has still to be raised from the dead. 

They had trouble at times to hold their congre- 
gation. Sure. But they managed to hold them. 
They resorted to expedients. One minister 
preaching a two-hour-and-a-half sermon said in 
the beginning, " I will preach the first part of my 
sermon to sinners, and the second part to saints." 
The result was they all sat it through. 

To leave before the sermon was ended was 
publicly to brand oneself as a sinner. 

John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, 
besides preaching in his own parish two two-hour- 
sermons on the Sabbath, and a two hour mid-week 
lecture, and occasional sermons elsewhere, marked 
out for himself this programme of work for every 
week which called for two hours for meditation and 
prayer each day: Monday for his family, Tues- 
day for his enemies, Wednesday for the churches, 
Thursday for other Societies, Friday for persons 
afflicted, and Saturday for his own soul. 

Now all this type of life meant what ? You know 
what. It meant fidelity, and conscience, and 
achievement, and growth, and manhood, and in- 
fluence. And when the time for the American 
Republic came, it meant intelligence, and moral, 
fibre, and courage, and conviction, and sacrifice, 
and patriotism, and a man in the ranks who would 



THE OLD TIME MINIS TEH, 393 

never wet his powder. You cannot put down 
such men when they are in the right, for they are 
men who refuse to fail. They are men with God 
on their side. In the second place: 

2. The Oldtime Minister helped to build up the 
American Republic by building up his home, and 
thus giving to his country sons and daughters who 
were elements of strength. 

Being the man I have described him to be, a 
grand personality in himself with noble purposes, 
it followed as a matter of course that he was able 
to marry well. ' This he usually did. This meant a 
home/^r excellence. The first homes of the land 
were open to him. It was considered by many a 
noble woman to be no small honor to preside in 
the parsonage. His marriage alliance introduced 
him into the best society of the age, and allowed 
him to touch head-centers of influence in the 
Colony, and associate with greatness outside of the 
pulpit, and thus to make his personality and 
religion effective from end to end in the com- 
munity. It gave him a solid backing, and noble 
and powerful allies. Besides this, it brought the 
best blood and the best brain of the time to his 
posterity. 

I have been astonished in the study of American 
history to see the power that has emanated from 
the minister's home : a power which has swayed 
the nation in great causes, given it leaders, and 
built it up in world-wide fame. 



29i MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Take one minister's family as an illustration ! 
The family of Francis Higginson, the first minister 
of Salem, Mass. To begin with, there was his 
son and successor, John Higginson, a man of 
power in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, I have 
already quoted one of his noted sayings to-night. 
But he was only the beginning. There is a long 
after-line of noble men in the succession ; men 
whose names our Republic has written on its roll 
of honor. These descendants of Francis Higgin- 
son have served the Republic in scores of ways. 
They are such men as these: Gov. Andrews, the 
great war governor of Massachusetts ; William 
Ellery Channing, the younger ; Stephen Higgin- 
son Tyng, the elder and the junior; Robert Treat 
Paine, the philanthropist ; Wm. T. Sherman, the 
great American general ; Senator John Sherman; 
Senator George F. Hoar; Senator Henry Cabot 
Lodge ; and others. 

There have been other sons of ministers who 
have been noted in American life. John Hancock, 
who presided over the deliberations of the Conti- 
nental Congress at Philadelphia, was the son of a 
minister. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was 
the son of a minister. Field, who laid the Atlantic 
cable, was the son of a minister. Ralph Waldo 
Emerson was the son of a minister. Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes was the son of a minister. James 
Russell Lowell was the son of a minister. Edward 
Everett, the polished orator, was the son of a minis- 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 295 

ter. Bancroft, Motley, Parkman, Higginson, 
Steadman, Bronson Alcott, Wendell Phillips, all 
boasted that clerical blood ran through their veins. 
These were all endowed with fine forces as a birth- 
right, and these were all American powers. The 
Republic stands better in the eye of the world 
because of them, and is strong in fact because they 
built their lives into it. 

But I must not forget the daughters of the 
Oldtime Minister. I have spoken thus far only of 
his sons. His daughters have been a national 
power, and have risen to places of influence. 
Abigail Smith, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Smith of 
the First Church, Weymouth, became Abigail 
Adams, the wife of John Adams. She was the 
most brilliant letter-writer of Colonial days, and 
to her letters the country owes much of its knowl- 
edge of early history. She rose until she reached 
the White House, and presided there with great 
power. She was not only the wife of one of the 
greatest presidents of the United States, she was 
also the mother of one of the greatest of our 
presidents. Grace Fletcher, a daughter of a New 
Hampshire minister, was the wife of Daniel 
Webster. The beautiful daughter of Rev. Dr. 
Appleton married President Pierce. Then last, 
but not least, there was a daughter of the Manse 
whose pen wrote one of the most powerful books 
of the world, " Uncle Tom's Cabin." That book 
helped to make the American Republic free. In 



296 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

view of these facts I am here to-night to say, 
" Clerical blood is the very best of American blood." 
There is none better. 

In the third place : 

3. The Oldtime Minister helped to build the 
American Republic by inangnrating and building 
onr great system of education. 

I can do little more than mention this point, for 
I wish to press on to the point which is beyond 
this. He himself was an education, and associa- 
tion with him meant scholarship. Patrick Henry 
said that he got his impulse and idea of eloquence 
from Rev. Samuel Davies, who afterwards became 
President of Princeton. Davies lived in Henry. 
He made his pulpit educational. His single ser- 
mons were whole books. No theological chair to- 
day gives a fuller system of theology than he gave 
from the sacred desk. He was a man of books and 
he made his library a public good. He founded 
libraries. He took pupils into his own home, and 
started them on the way to their professions. All 
the professions were indebted to him. He founded 
our academies and our universities. Harvard and 
Yale and Dartmouth would never have had a 
being nor a career but for him. He was before 
them, and back of them, and in them. He was 
back also of our free schools, and often was part 
and parcel of them. Did education make our 
Republic, it was the Oldtime Minister that made 
education. He led on this line. 



THE OLDTIME MINISTER. 297 

In the fourth place : 

4. The Oldtune Minister helped to build the 
American RepJiblic by doing his full share in the 
advocacy of the cause of liberty ivhich issued in 
the Revolution that made the existence of the 
Republic an assured fact. 

I know that you expect me to make this point, 
and that because of your knowledge of general 
history. For this fact stands out in prominence 
in the history of Christendom, viz : that back of 
every great cause which has carried in it the liberties 
of mankind the ministry of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ has as a rule been the power beJiindthe throne. 
Daniel Webster asks in his great speech in the 
Girard case, " Where have the life-giving waters of 
civilization sprung, save in the track of the Chris- 
tian ministry." The clergy have led in all the 
great movements of the centuries: Chrysostom 
in Greece: Augustine in Africa: Savonarola in 
Italy: Luther in Germany: Zwingle in Switzer- 
land : John Calvin in France : John Knox in 
Scotland and John Wesley in England. Take the 
pulpit out of the world and you will leave a poor 
wreck as a remainder. 

History has repeated itself in the story of our 
nation. For the clergy stood in the front ranks 
as civil and religious leaders in the early days. 
They did so because everything then centered 
around the church. Franchise was restricted to 
church-members. The town meeting was held in 



298 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the house of worship and often in connection with 
the mid-week lecture or the church election ser- 
mons were demanded, and were the order of the 
day. This made politics the legitimate domain 
of the clerg-yman. Politics were part of his re- 
ligion. All this placed him, whether he would or 
no, in the front ranks in civil matters. Hence we 
find him preaching on all matters pertaining to 
the state and counselling with the governing 
bodies. 

It was often said of Rev. John Cotton, the first 
minister of Boston, " that what he uttered in the 
pulpit on Sabbath was issued by the court during 
the week." 

The minister even led and founded Colonies. 
Rev. John Davenport, whose descendants we have 
in this church, led and founded the Colony of 
New Haven, and was a power in creating and 
fostering Yale University. Roger Williams led and 
founded the Colony of Rhode Island. He was 
the^ first statesman to utter and to establish that 
advanced American principle of the separation 
of Church and State. In the matter of conscience 
the State has no rights : the rights there belong 
solely to the individual. In matters of conscience 
man is responsible only to his God. This prin- 
ciple is the very essence of religion. Rev. Thomas 
Hooker led and founded the Colony of Connec- 
ticut. It was he who gave utterance to another 
advanced American principle, viz., this principle : — 



THE OLDTIME MINISTER. 299 

" The foundation of aiitJiority is laid in the free 
consent of the governed^ 

Of course he did not in this ignore God as the 
source of all authority : he was speaking only of 
the administration of what God has ordained. 
He was speaking from the human side of affairs, 
and he was right. Carrying out this principle of 
his, he framed and ordained the Constitution of 
Connecticut. John Fiske says, " This was the 
first written constitution known to history that 
created a government, and it marked the begin- 
ning of American democracy. Of this democracy 
Thomas Hooker deserves more than any man to 
be called " the father." My fellow-men, this was 
grand service. It was foundation work, and it ex- 
liibits the leadership of the clergy when leader- 
ship was sorely needed. 

Not only did theOld time Minister, in the early 
days, found and organize Colonies, he also stood 
guard over these Colonies where founded and 
saw that their rights were not infringed. Here 
is an instance : When Sir Edward Andros was sent 
over as governor of Massachusetts by James IT., 
and undertook to impose and collect a tax with- 
out the consent of the Colony, Rev. John Wise of 
Ipswich conducted a public meeting of protest 
and the town passed resolutions to resist. True, 
he was imprisoned for his course, but the tax 
was not collected. That was the American Re- 
volution in advance of its day. When the Revo- 



300 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

lution came, it was the church bell of the Meet- 
ing-house of Lexington, rung by the direction of 
a minister, that sounded the first alarm and sum- 
moned the farmers of New England, who fired 
" tJiat shot ivJiicJi tvas Jieard around the zvorld^ 

I have been speaking to-night largely, I might 
say solely, of the Oldtime Minister of New Eng- 
land. I must take a moment here to speak at 
least of one Oldtime Minister of another section 
of our countrj^, and of another faith than that 
which prevailed in New England. I must speak 
of a grand old Presbyterian minister, the presi- 
dent of our famous Presbyterian university, the 
University of Princeton. I refer to that Scotch 
son of John Knox, his lineal descendant, the ven- 
erable Dr. Witherspoon, a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress. The hour had come for the 
signing ofthe Declaration of Independence. But 
the Congress hesitated. Had Dr. Witherspoon 
not been there, it is a question what would have 
become of the unsigned Declaration. The Con- 
gress was hesitating. The country was looking 
on. Three million hearts were violently throb- 
bing in intense anxiety, waiting for the old bell on 
Independence Hall to ring. " It was an hour 
that marked the grandest epoch in human history. 
What a scene was there! On the table in the 
presence of that able body of statesmen lay the 
charter of human freedom in clear-cut utterances, 
flinging defiance in the face of opposition. It 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 301 

was an hour in which strong men trembled. 
There was a painful silence. In the midst of this 
silence Dr. Witherspoon rose and uttered these 
thrilling words : — 

"To hesitate at this moment is to consent to 
our own slavery. That notable instrument upon 
your table, which insures immortality to its au- 
thor, should be subscribed this very morning by 
every pen in this house. He that will not respond 
to its accent and strain every nerve to carry into 
effect its provisions is unworthy the name of 
freeman. Whatever I have of property, of repu- 
tation, is staked on the issue of this contest, and 
although these gray hairs must soon descend into 
the sepulchre, I would rather that they descend 
thither by the hand of the executioner, than desert 
at this crisis the sacred cause of my country." 
That was the voice of JoJin Knox in Independence 
Hall : and it told. That ministerial voice pre- 
vailed. The Declaration of Independence was at 
once signed : and then the old liberty bell on 
Independence Hall rang out, and the foundation 
of the American Republic was forever and se- 
curely laid. 

In closing allow me to say I want you to admire 
the Oldtime Minister and do him justice. Honor 
him, for he deserves honor. We have been ac- 
customed to look upon him for the most part as 
an old fogy. He was not an old fogy. He was 
a progressive. We have been accustomed to look 



302 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

upon him as a bigot. He was not a bigot. He 
was the radical of his century. He was the lib- 
eral of his times. He dreamed dreams, and he 
saw visions, and every one of them was an ad- 
vance. Measure him by the Duke of Alva, and 
Phillip II., and Charles V., if you would see 
him in his true light. Compared with these men 
he was a liberal of the liberals. He was a step- 
ping-stone to where we are now. He was the 
seed, we are the harvest. His chief faith as he 
handled his Bible was that expressed by John 
Robinson at the Embarkation of the Pilgrims 
when he said : " There is more light yet to break 
forth from God's Word'' He lived ever waiting 
for that light. I say of him what Carlyle said of 
Cromwell : " The memory of Oliver Cromwell has a 
good many centuries in it," even so " The memory 
of the Oldtime Minister has a good many centuries 
in it." 

My fellow-men, do you want to honor the Old 
time Minister? Then do this: — Honor the one 
great Book by which he lived, the Holy Word of 
God, tJie Bible. The Bible made the American 
Republic : and only the Bible can perpetuate it. 

On the brow of the hill overlooking the bay 
where the Mayflotver was moored, and where the 
waters continue to beat in volleying thunders, or 
in musical laughter, upon its sand, they have 
erected a colossal statue of national significance. 
On the four corners of the pedestal repose four 



THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 303 

figures representing Lazi\ ISIorality, Freedom, and 
Education. These should rest there by right. 
But above these stands erect the gigantic figure 
of Faith. Thirty and six feet she rises from the 
foot — which rests upon a slate from Plymouth 
Rock. With one hand she grasps an open Bible, 
and with the other in graceful gesture she points 
the nation up to God. The only book she opens 
to the eyes of the world is the Bible. And so it 
should be. The Bible holds the only true light 
by which we have been led in all our advances of 
liberty in the past : and the Bible holds the only 
true light by which we can make progress in the 
cause of liberty in the future. 

" God of our fathers, known of old, 

Lord of our far-flung battle-line : 
Beneath whose awful hand we hold 

Dominion over palm and pine : 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget : lest we forget. 

If drunk with sight of power, we loose 

Wild tongues which have not Thee in awe, 

Such boasting as the Gentiles use : 
Or lesser Breeds without the law. 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget : lest we forget 1 " 



X. 

THE BENCH AND BAR. 

BY 

HON. W. W. GOODRICH 
Presiding Justice, Supreme Court, State of New York. 



305 



THE BENCH AND BAR.* 

By Hon. W. W. Goodrich, 
Presiding Justice, Supreme Court, State of New York. 

In discussing my subject I propose to refer 
briefly to the history of nations in order to indicate 
the influence which fundamental law necessarily 
has upon the permanence of nations. I shall argue 
that, to ensure permanence, a nation must be 
founded upon justice to the individual, liberty to 
every citizen and obedience to the law of God ; and 
I shall indicate the part which Bench and Bar have 
taken in the formation and development of our 
national institutions. 

Centuries measure the lives of nations, as years 
measure the lives of men, and we must search the 
centuries to ascertain the conditions which have 
contributed to the downfall of nations no longer 
existent. It may be said of these ancient nations, 
and it is sufficient for my purpose to say, that they 
perished from the face of the earth because they 
failed to recognize the one true God, to obey his 
law and to establish justice and liberty for the in- 
dividual citizen. 

* An address delivered Forefathers' day, celebrating the 2Soth 
anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. 



310 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

The Bible, most venerable of historical books, 
purports to speak of human history for only forty 
centuries before Christ, yet the recent discovery by 
Professor Hilprecht, of tablets with cunieform 
characters, in the library of an ancient temple in 
Asia Minor, made six thousand years before Christ, 
demonstrates that long before that time there had 
been a flourishing civilization which had founded 
great States, had built great palaces and temples 
and cities now covered by the sands of the desert. 
Of the rise and fall of these States we have no 
record. 

History discloses the fact that nations always 
have a period of growth, a period of war and con- 
quest, a period of luxury and effeminacy and a 
period of decadence. These periods have followed 
in unvarying sequence with all the ancient nations 
of the world. 

Neither good laws nor religion alone have been 
sufficient for permanence. Ancient empires had the 
former but did not endure. The Jewish Nation, 
which began its real national life 1491 B. C, when 
Moses led it from Egypt into Palestine, was founded 
on morality and religion. It had a pure theocracy 
and a priesthood to administer its laws but the per- 
sonal majesty of the citizen was of small impor- 
tance in the a:dministration of affairs. This nation 
gave to the world the greatest codes of law ever 
promulgated, the law of Moses and the law of 
Christ, but it fell and was scattered to the ends of 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 311 

the earth, because it broke the law of Moses and re- 
jected the law of Christ ; yet, scattered as its people 
have been, they retain their national characteristics, 
because they have maintained the law and tradition 
of their ancestors through the centuries which have 
followed their expulsion from Jerusalem. 

While I may not claim that Moses was a lawyer 
by profession, I have often thought that he was 
one, in all but the name. Possibly he was not a 
lawyer, because, so far as the record shows, there 
was no court to admit him to practice. Perhaps it 
was such a case as we find in that brief but famous 
chapter in the history of Ireland, entitled " On 
Snakes in Ireland," where immediately after the 
caption it was said : " There are no snakes in Ire- 
land." Certainly he had the qualifications and the 
knowledge of law which go to make, and which 
would have made him, a great lawyer. The deca- 
logue announced through him has been the basis of 
all subsequent law. 

It will not serve my purpose to trace the history 
of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Egypt. With all 
their power and genius, wealth and luxury, their 
inhabitants were idolators. They had little regard 
for justice, while the liberty of the individual was 
a thing unknown. They, too, ceased to exist, and 
the monuments of their civilization are buried in 
the sands of the desert. 

Greece, which prospered from iioo B. C. till it 
was conquered by the Romans in the second cen- 



312 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

tury of the Christian era, and Rome, which flour- 
ished from 700 B. C. till the fifth century, A. D., 
when it was overcome by the Vandals, were poly- 
theistic nations. Their governments were aristoc- 
racies, in which the freedom and rights of the com- 
mon people had no place. Yet it may be said of 
both Greece and Rome that the laws which their 
great lawgivers promulgated have exercised an 
imperishable influence upon civilization. I need re- 
fer only to Solon of Athens, Pheidon of Corinth, 
Charendas of Katena, as examples of lawmakers 
in Greece, and to Justinian and Cicero of Rome. 
These nations fell into ruin, but the laws which 
they created still survive, and from them in large 
measure Europe derived her civilization. 

This brief reference to the dominant empires of 
the ancient world is sufficient to show that nations 
exist only so long as they enact just laws and obey 
them ; that they hasten to their fall when law, the 
freedom of the individual and his right to part and 
parcel in the government are disregarded. 

After the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, 
Europe sank into the superstition and supineness 
of the Dark Ages, from which it slowly emerged 
with the Reformation and the discovery of print- 
ing. As these spread intelligence and a truer relig- 
ion, the modern nations of Europe began their 
real march of progress. With them came better 
laws, and more liberty to the common people, al- 
though they came as the slow growth of centuries. 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 313 

In English History especially is this manifest. 
The liberty of the nation began when the barons 
wrested Magna Charta from King John, in 12 15. 
That was in fact an establishment of law. From 
that time onward, the nation struggled through 
civil and religious strifes, but always improving her 
laws, more nearly to conform to the eternal prin- 
ciples of liberty, justice and equity, until she erected 
a system of jurisprudence never before equalled, 
and only dreamed of by Socrates and Plato. Obedi- 
ence to God's law and the right of each citizen to 
personal liberty and participation in governmental 
affairs became the basic principle of government. 
Upon her system of just laws her greatness will 
endure so long as it is followed and preserved. 

The seed of the Reformation found congenial 
and fertile soil in England. It produced a just re- 
gard for the rights of the common people, the 
equality of all men before the law, liberty of con- 
science, and the right of each man to worship God 
according to the dictates of his own conscience. 
But this end was not attained without agony and 
blood. The Pilgrim found to his sorrow that in 
large degree he was trammeled and persecuted by 
the Established Church. He fled to Holland, and 
finally, in the MayUower, to the desolate shores of 
New England, but he brought with him Magna 
Charta, the Declaration of Rights and the undying 
love of personal liberty. 

During the thirty years following the Pilgrim 



314 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and Puritan exodus, which ended with the execu- 
tion of Charles I., more than twenty-five thousand 
colonists fled to New England, but with the cessa- 
tion of religious persecution in England upon the 
establishment of the Protectorate, emigration prac- 
tically ceased. 

Meanwhile, the Jamestown Colony, begun in 
1607, was also building its temple of liberty. Other 
colonies were laying their foundations along the At- 
lantic coast. In all these structures, the corner 
stone was civil and religious liberty and obedience 
to the law of God. By a slow and tedious process 
of evolution there was gradually developed in all 
the colonies an abiding belief in human freedom, 
and the power of asserting and maintaining na- 
tional independence. All nations before our own 
had been governed by monarchs or aristocracies, 
because the idea of the personal liberty of the indi- 
vidual had not been their dominant principle. It 
was only when this idea had taken deep root in the 
minds of our forefathers, that free America came 
into being, with power at once to maintain itself and 
its ideas. Then, for the first time in human history, 
a nation was born, founded on civil and religious 
liberty and equal rights to all men before the law. 
Other peoples, spurred by our example and success, 
have grown into this faith, but the thought was 
conceived and matured in America. 

Let us see now what part the Bench and Bar 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 315 

have taken, and what influence they have exercised 
in the formation of the American Republic. 

Our history is manifestly divisible into four 
periods — the Colonial period ending with the close 
of the Revolution, the Constitutional period end- 
ing" with the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 
the Formative period ending with the Civil War, 
and the National period, now in progress. 

THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 

As to the early part of the Colonial period, I 
must frankly admit that our Pilgrim fathers barely 
tolerated lawyers, regarding them as a necessary 
evil to be carefully circumscribed. Perhaps they 
had the prejudice which exists in the uneducated 
mind of to-day, well illustrated in the remark of 
an Irishman who saw a tombstone with the in- 
scription, "Here lies the body of John Robinson, a 
lawyer and an honest man," and reflectively ob- 
served : "A lawyer and an honest man. I wonder 
what the two of them is doing in the one grave." 
Perhaps they remembered the 'objurgation, "Wo 
unto you lawyers !" which had been sounding down 
the centuries of the Christian era. Yet, there were 
among the early colonists at least three who had 
been educated for the bar, Winthrop, Bellingham 
and Humphrey, and possibly two others, Bradstreet 
and Pelham, all influential in the moulding of Colo- 
nial affairs. 



316 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

In the latter part of the Colonial period, how- 
ever, we find that the New England lawyers were 
arousing and guiding public sentiment toward the 
independence of the colonies. Among them were 
John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Thomas Gushing, 
Joseph Hawley, Josiah Quincy and James Otis. In 
Virginia there were Thomas Jefiferson, James Madi- 
son, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry. Otis, 
in 1761, and Henry, in 1763, in legal arguments on 
writs of encroachments, laid open the design of 
England to subjugate the colonies and make them 
forever dependent. There is little doubt that the 
work of these great lawyers influenced and con- 
firmed the colonies in their determination to free 
themselves from England and her injustice. 

In 1774, Massachusetts issued a call to the other 
colonies for the first Continental Congress, which 
met in Philadelphia in September. It formed what 
has been termed the Revolutionary Government, 
which endured until superseded by the Confederated 
Government, in 1781. 

More than one-half of the delegates to this con- 
gress were lawyers, prominent among whom were 
John Adams and Thomas Gushing, of Massachu- 
setts, Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, Roger 
Sherman of Connecticut, James Duane (first mayor 
of New York City), John Jay and Henry Wisner 
(the only New York delegate voting for the Dec- 
laration of Independence) of New York, Samuel 
Chase of Maryland, Patrick Henry and Randolph 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 317 

Peyton of Virginia, Richard Caswell of North 
Carolina and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. 

John Adams drew the famous Fourth Article of 
the Declaration of Rights, passed by this Congress, 
and commencing : 

'The foundation of English liberty and of all 
free governments, is the right to participate in their 
legislative council, and as the English Colonists 
are not represented, and from the local and other 
circumstances, cannot be properly represented in 
the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free 
and exclusive power of legislation in the several 
provincial legislatures." This was the precursor of 
the Declaration of Independence. 

The second Continental Congress, which assem- 
bled at Philadelphia, in May, 1775, authorized the 
raising of a continental army and appointed Wash- 
ington commander-in-chief. Most of the delegates 
to the first Congress were returned to this, and 
more than two-thirds of the delegates of the second 
Congress were lawyers. Among the new mem- 
bers appear the following lawyers: Josiah Bartlett 
of New Hampshire, Robert Livingston of New 
York, who with the assistance of Monroe after- 
ward negotiated the purchase of Louisiana ; Thomas 
Johnson of Maryland, Thomas Jefferson and George 
Wythe of Virginia, and Archibald Bullock of Geor- 
gia. The only minister in this Congress was the 
Reverend John J. Zubly, a prominent Presbyterian 
and delegate from Georgia. It must be saddening 



318 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

to my clerical friends to know that he was disloyal 
to the American cause and was denounced as a 
traitor on the floor of Congress by Judge Chase of 
Maryland, w'ho called him a Judas. 

This Congress, on July 4, 1776, gave to the world 
the Declaration of Independence. It was a new 
and startling statement of the right of the people 
to self-government, and came upon the world like a 
thunderbolt from clear skies. The principle had 
been foreshadowed by Diderot, Voltaire, Montes- 
quieu and Rousseau, in France, and in the establish- 
ment of the Protectorate of Cromwell in England; 
but its crystallization in a written instrument as the 
basic principle of government was novel and sur- 
prising. In France it was followed, whether as a 
necessary consequence or not I do not undertake to 
determine, by the Revolution of 1789; and in Eng- 
land, by the extension of the suffrage and practically 
by a republic governed by Parliament. Of the fifty- 
five signers of that immortal document, thirty-two 
were lawyers, of whom twenty-two were, or after- 
ward became, judges. Prominent among them 
were Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, Richard 
Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John 
Adams and Robert Treat Paine of Massachusetts, 
and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. I might say, 
in passing, that there was but one clergyman, John 
Witherspoon of New Jersey. Of the committee of 
five, to draft the Declaration, three were lawyers, 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 31 9 

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Roger Sher- 
man. 

It is hardly possible for us in these quiet times of 
peace and prosperity to conceive the danger attend- 
ing so positive an act of rebellion against the parent 
government as that would have been if the Revolu- 
tion had not succeeded. Every signer put his life, 
liberty and fortune in the balance, where failure 
meant ruin and death. Yet more than two-thirds 
of those brave and patriotic men were lawyers. Of 
such men the poet sings: ■• 

"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her 

wretched crust, 
Ere her cause brings fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous 

to be just: 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the crown stands 

aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified; 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had 

denied." 

The history of the Revolutionary War is not es- 
sential to my theme. There were lawyers in com- 
mand and in private service. Among the former 
was Alexander Hamilton, probably the most influen- 
tial of the great lawyers of the Constitutional 
period. He was on the staff of Washington ; and 
when after his presidency Washington was ap- 
pointed lieutenant-general, he consented to accept 
the position only on the condition that Hamilton 
should be appointed major-general, ne^ct to him- 



320 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

self, chief in command of the army. He was one 
of the founders of the Manumission Society of the 
last century, the chief object of which was the aboli- 
tion of slavery. He was a promoter and one of 
the most active members of the Constitutional Con- 
vention. Constructive statesmanship seemed to be 
the master passion of his life. His voice and in- 
fluence more than those of any other man induced 
the convention to introduce into the Constitution 
its federal strength. He helped to build on broad 
lines the authority of the Constitution. He was the 
chief contributor to The Federalist, which has al- 
ways been standard authority on the plan of the con- 
stitution. He became secretary of the treasury in 
the cabinet of Washington and largely shaped by 
heroic measures the financial affairs of the country 
throughout the troublesome times which existed 
during Washington's term of office. So efficient 
was his work that Webster said of him : "He 
smote the rock of the national resources and abun- 
dant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched 
the dead corpse of public credit and it sprung upon 
its feet." It has been claimed that he wrote Wash- 
ington's farewell address. His early death in 1804. 
at the age of forty-seven, in a duel with Aaron 
Burr, ended a brilliant career and plunged the whole 
nation into mourning. 

It now becomes necessary to remember the con- 
dition in which the struggling but triumphant con- 
federation found itself at the end of the war. The 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 321 

colonies deemed themselves, and in fact were, sover- 
eign and independent of each other. Each had ideas 
and tendencies peculiarly its own. I need only 
to suggest Massachusetts with its Pilgrim and Puri- 
tan settlement, Maryland with its Catholic settle- 
ment, Virginia with its Cavalier settlement and 
South Carolina with its Huguenot settlement, in 
order to recall the difficulties of the situation. While 
in a loose and feeble way they had united in the War 
of the Revolution, the colonies were still a band of 
independent States, bound together by no other ties 
than those of self protection and common interests; 
and while for a decade there was a shadowy bond 
of union between them, they were always drawing 
farther apart, each jealous of its own sovereignty 
and primacy and of the rank and prominence of all 
the others, and all alike absolutely opposed to any- 
thing like federal power and control. There was 
a congress which legislated, but it had no power to 
enforce its own edicts. The national finances, al- 
ways the nerve of national life, were in such dis- 
order that the government had credit neither at 
home nor abroad, and it was almost impossible to 
raise funds for its current business. The paper cur- 
rency was valueless. Industry was paralyzed. Riot 
and crime stalked hand in hand through the land. 
The Colonial period ended in national disorder, 
gloom and despondency. 



322 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL PERIOD. 

Such was the condition of affairs when the Con- 
stitutional period commenced. While not of long 
duration, it was of vast importance in the forma- 
tion of the republic, and the most important epoch 
of our history, for in it a new nation was created on 
an absolutely new foundation. Rufus Choate once 
said: "I dwell on that time, from 1780 to 1789, be- 
cause that was an age of civil greatness. Then first 
we grew to be one. In that time our nation was 
born. That which went before made us indepen- 
dent. Our better liberty, our law, our order, our 
Union, our credit, our commerce, our rank among 
nations, our page in the great history, we owe to 
this. Independence was the work of the higher 
passions. The Constitution was the slow product of 
wisdom." 

Steps were taken in 1786 toward the calling of a 
convention for the framing of a Constitution. 
Months elapsed before it could be convened, and 
even then, some of the colonies refused full partic- 
ipation. In May, 1787, after repeated failures, the 
convention met at Independence Hall, in Philadel- 
phia, to adopt a Constitution for the United States. 
Washington, who was chosen its president, said in 
his opening address : 'Tt is too probable that no 
plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another 
dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the 
people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 323 

can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise 
a standard to which the wise and the honest can re- 
pair. The event is in the hand of God." 

The proceedings of the Convention, which lasted 
five months, were in secret for the stated reason 
that while there might be difterences of opinion on 
many subjects it was desirable that the complete 
work should be submitted in its entirety to the peo- 
ple; and it was not until the death of ex-President 
Madison, the last survivor of the members, that his 
journal of the proceedings was published. 

The membership and influence of lawyers in that 
fateful Convention were of vast importance. Of the 
fifty-five members thirty-five were lawyers, of whom 
nineteen then were, or afterward became, judges. 
Prominent among these lawyers was Alexander 
Hamilton, the friend and right arm of Washington, 
and subsequently his secretary of the treasury. I 
need only to mention the names of Roger Sherman, 
Oliver Ellsworth, Jonathan Dayton, Gouverneur 
Morris, Rufus King, James Madison. Charles C. 
Pinckney and Edmund Randolph. 

On September 17, 1787, after a long and heated 
session and many differences of opinion, the con- 
vention adopted the Constitution and submitted it 
to the States for ratification. It was to take effect 
when ratified by nine States, and the ninth ratified 
it on March 4, 1789, when the United States of 
America" became a sovereign power. 

The establishment of the United States as a nation 



324 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

was unique in the history of the world. Other na- 
tions have grown from barbarism to civihzation by 
process of national evolution. But our nation may 
be said to have been born in a day. True, it felt the 
influence of European civilization, but it was set 
apart in a new continent. True, it was established 
by emigrants from many nations, but the touch of 
the Western hemisphere seems to have created new 
thoughts, new ideas, new action. In later years, 
when our form of government had proved a success, 
similar federations occurred in Europe, as in Ger- 
many after the French War, and in Italy after it 
was aroused by Garibaldi. It may be said that both 
these nations learned a lesson from our example and 
exemplified the adage, "Imitation is the sincerest 
flattery." 

To recall briefly the peculiarity of our Constitu- 
tion, let me remind you that it provides for an ex- 
ecutive, a legislature and a judicial branch, each su- 
preme in its own domain. In its own province the 
Supreme Court is independent, and in its exposition 
of the Constitution is final and supreme. The inde- 
pendence of the judiciary is one of the essential 
features of the Constitution and has had vast in- 
fluence in the development of our national integrity 
and permanence. 

Montesquieu said : "There is no liberty if the 
judiciary power be not separated from the legis- 
lative and executive powers." 

Burke declared : "Whatever is supreme in a State 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 395 

ought to have as much as possible its judicial power 
so constituted as not only to depend upon, but in 
some sort to balance it. It ought to give security 
to his justice, against its power." 

Mr. Gladstone said that "as the British Consti- 
tution is the most subtle organism which has pro- 
ceeded from progressive history, so the American 
Constitution is the most wonderful work ever 
struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose 
of man." 

John Fiske calls it : "The Iliad, the Parthenon or 
the fifth symphony of Beethoven * '* * two 
complete and well-rounded systems of law, the State 
law and the Federal law, each with its legislative, 
its executive and its judiciary, moving one within 
the other, noiselessly and without friction. It was 
one of the longest reaches of constructive states- 
manship ever known in the world." 

THE FORMATIVE PERIOD. 

This brings us to the formative period of our 
country, which commenced with the adoption 
of the Constitution and ended with the Civil War. 
Here the influence of Bench and Bar has been para- 
mount. This period witnessed the real building of 
the nation on the foundation of the Constitution. 
At first the Constitution was an experiment. True, 
by its terms it bound the States together in one 
nation, but its meaning was not clearly defined or 



32G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

understood. There still were discordant elements. 
On the one side, it was claimed that the sovereignty 
of the States was unimpaired ; that the nation w^as a 
mere compact or league of States from which any 
one of them might withdraw at its own volition. 
On the other hand, it was contended that the Con- 
stitution created a new sovereignty, supreme in all 
that had been committed to it by the express lan- 
guage of the Constitution, and that no State could 
withdraw the power over itself which by its ratifica- 
tion had been conferred upon the nation. It is easy 
nozv, to see that our very existence as a nation, or 
the breaking of the Union into weak and warring 
States depended upon the decision of this momen- 
tous question. These subjects gave rise to constant 
irritation during the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

We are all familiar with the struggle over the at- 
tempted extension of slavery into the Territories, 
and the great debate between Douglas and Lin- 
coln, in which Lincoln asserted that irrespective of 
constitutional authority, or of public policy, the 
higher question of human right and wrong was in- 
volved in the slavery controversy, and on this great 
moral question obtained a majority of the popular 
vote which ought to have secured his election to the 
Senate. He was defeated only through the appor- 
tionment of legislative districts. This remarkable 
contest made the declaration, "No extension of hu- 
man slavery," the principal plank of the Republican 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 327 

platform in i860, upon which Lincohi was elected 
President. The right of a State to secede from the 
Union occupied the attention of Congress and the 
public for many years. The question culminated 
in and was effectively decided by the Civil War. 

Prominent among the men who argued for the 
integrity of the Union and against nullification and 
the right of a State to secede was Daniel Webster, 
the greatest of all constitutional lawyers and de- 
baters, and pre-eminently the apostle of national- 
ity. His orations became the theme of the fireside 
and the hustings, of the press and the pulpit, and 
created public sentiment for nationality. They were 
declaimed by the school boy, who early in life drew 
from them an inspiration of patriotism which made 
his maturer years of service to his country. His 
argument was not for the creation of a nation but 
was the exposition as an existent fact of a nation 
created by and based upon the Constitution. In that 
position he never faltered. Who can forget the 
thrilling words which closed his reply to Hayne, 
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in- 
separable !" which became the watchwords of the 
nation? Webster in Congress and in public debates 
was what, as we shall presently see. Chief Justice 
Marshall was in the Supreme Court, the exponent 
of nationality. 

The work of the formative period has been largely 
manifested in the decisions of the Supreme Court 
of the United States and of the other Federal courts, 



328 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

as well as in those of the courts of the several States. 
Between the Federal and the State courts there has 
been singularly little difference of opinion. They 
have alike interpreted the Constitution in such a 
way that the march of the nation has been a con- 
tinual triumph at home and abroad. 

The Supreme Court of the United States, in the 
last analysis, is the keystone of our national edifice. 
It is in the government what the balance wheel is 
in machinery. It was neither an imitation of nor 
an evolution from any tribunal previously existing. 
It was an absolute invention of the convention. For 
the first time in national history a court was created 
whose function it was to pass upon all other 
branches of the government, the Constitutions of 
the States and even the Federal Constitution itself. 
This court has been called "the crowning marvel 
of the wonders wrought by the statesmanship of 
America, embodying the loftiest ideas of moral and 
legal power." "Its judges are the high priests of 
justice. * * * ]\^o institution of human con- 
trivance presents so many features calculated to in- 
spire awe and vejieration." "It is a tribunal of 
which the ancient world could present no model, 
and the modern world boast no parallel, whose de- 
crees, woven like threads of gold into the priceless 
and imperishable fabric of our constitutional juris- 
prudence, would bind in the bonds of love, liberty 
and law the members of a great republic." 

Mr. Fiske says: 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 329 

"But for this system of United States courts ex- 
tended throughout the States and supreme within its 
own sphere, the Federal Constitution could never 
have been put into practical, working order. In an- 
other respect the Federal judiciary was the most re- 
markable and original of all the creations of that 
wonderful convention. It was charged with the 
duty of interpreting, in accordance with the general 
principles of common law, the Federal Constitution 
itself. This is the most noble as it is the most dis- 
tinctive feature in the government of the United 
States. It constitutes a difference between the 
American and British systems more fundamental 
than the separation of the executive from the legis- 
lative department. In Great Britain the unwritten 
constitution is administered by the omnipotent 
House of Commons; whatever statute is enacted 
by Parliament must stand until some future Parlia- 
ment may see fit to repeal it. But an act passed by 
both houses of Congress, and signed by the Presi- 
dent, may still be set aside as unconstitutional by 
the Supreme Court of the United States in its judg- 
ments upon individual cases brought before it. It 
was thus that the practical working of our Federal 
Constitution during the first thirty years of the 
nineteenth century was swayed to so great an ex- 
tent by the profound and luminous decisions of 
Chief Justice Marshall, that he must be assigned a 
foremost place among the founders of our Federal 
Union. This intrusting to the judiciary the whole 



330 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

interpretation of the fundamental instrument of 
government is the most peculiarly American fea- 
ture of the work done by the convention, and to the 
stability of such a federation as ours, covering, as 
it does, the greater part of a huge continent, it was 
absolutely indispensable." 

The dominance of the Supreme Court in national 
affairs justifies allusion to some of its distinguished 
members. The chief justices have been John Jay, 
John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth, John Marshall, 
Roger B. Taney, Salmon P. Chase, Morrison R. 
Waite and Melville W. Fuller. John Jay, the first 
chief justice, was a member of the Congress of 
1774, and, though almost the youngest member, he 
was selected to draft the famous "Address to the 
People of Great Britain." He was a member of 
the Congresses of 1775 and 1776, but was not a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence, because 
he was absent on other ofllicial duties. At the close 
of the Revolutionary War he was one of the com- 
missioners for negotiating the treaty of peace with 
Great Britain which bears his name. He became 
chief justice in 1789, and was governor of the State 
of New York from 1795 to 1801. It was of him 
that Webster said: "When the judicial ermine fell 
on his shoulders it touched nothing less spotless 
than itself." 

John Marshall, the fourth chief justice, was the 
most eminent and influential of all. Shortly after 
the battle of Lexington, when nineteen years of 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 331 

age, he joined a military company which elected 
him lieutenant and afterward captam. The men 
wore the famous words of Patrick Henry, "Liberty 
or death," embroidered on their uniforms. ' With 
the company he took part in the famous battles of 
Germantown, Brandywine and Monmouth, and en- 
dured the terrible hardships of Valley Forge. It 
is said that once when travelling on military duty, 
he applied for lodgings at a hotel and that the future 
chief justice was refused accommodation on account 
of his poverty and rags. He was a member of the 
Virginia House of Delegates for many years and a 
member of the Council of State. In 1788, he was a 
member of the Virginia Convention which ratified 
the Federal Constitution, and was one of the fore- 
most advocates of its adoption, taking high rank as a 
debater. After its adoption he was its earnest 
friend. In 1798, he was one of the envoys to nego- 
tiate a treaty with France. Washington offered 
him the place of attorney general in his cabinet, but 
Marshall declined. President Adams offered him a 
seat in the United States Supreme Court, but this 
honor also he refused. He was a member of Con- 
gress in 1799. In 1800 Adams appointed him 
secretary of war, but before entering that office he 
was made secretary of state, and in 1801 he was 
appointed chief justice. He wrote a life of Wash- 
ington and a history of the American Colonies. 

Marshall was chief justice for thirty- four years 
and did more than any other man to establish the 



332 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

foundations and limits of our government, then in 
its infancy. He had no precedents to which he 
could refer, as all the ground was new; yet he 
evolve'd as from his inner consciousness the breadth 
and scope of constitutional authority and its limi- 
tation. His first famous decision declared that the 
Supreme Court had the right and power to pro- 
nounce an act of Congress null and void if, in its 
opinion, such an act was in violation of the Constitu- 
tion. Until then there was a popular delusion that 
there was no limit to legislative power ; that the two 
houses of Congress, as the representatives of the 
people, could declare the people's will on any subject 
to any degree, and were responsible only to the 
members of the commonwealth ; but Judge Marshall 
denied this prerogative, and held that the Supreme 
Court was greater than Congress, and under the 
Constitution the highest final authority of the gov- 
ernment. 

Professor Bryce says of Marshall : "The Constitu- 
tion seemed not so much to rise under his hands 
to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled by 
him till it stood revealed in the harmonious perfec- 
tion of the form which its framers had designed. 
That admirable flexibility and capacity for growth 
which characterize it beyond all other rigid or su- 
preme constitutions, is largely due to him." 

Warren Olney said : "Instead of the Constitution 
being a rope of sand, as most men at first believed, 
or an infringement on the liberties of the people, as 



THE BENCH AND BAR. . 3:J3 

represented by the States, as many thought, Mar- 
shall showed, by lucid reasoning and by the author- 
ity of this great judicial tribunal, that the Constitu- 
tion was a ligament binding us together as a 
common whole, but yet preserving to the States in- 
dividual freedom in all local and personal affairs. 
Changing the simile, we may say in the language of 
President Garfield : "Marshall found the Constitu- 
tion paper, and he made it power; he found it a 
skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood." 

It would serve no useful purpose to state particu- 
lar points of Judge Marshall's opinions. It is 
enough to say as their authoritative result, that he 
found a band of loosely connected States and that he 
left a strong nation. The centenary of his appoint- 
ment as chief justice is to be observed in 1901, when 
a grateful nation will honor his memory. 

Turning now to the executive branch of our 
government, we find that of the twenty-four presi- 
dents, nineteen have been lawyers, the laymen be- 
ing Washington, Wm. H. Harrison, Taylor, John- 
son and Grant. The first lawyer president was John 
Adams, who had largely affected pre-revolutionary 
public sentiment in Massachusetts upon the question 
of our independence. He was a member of the 
second Continental Congress and one of the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson was a member of the same Congress 
and drafted and signed the Declaration. He was 
also one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty 



334: MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

with Great Britain. He was the father of true 
modern Democracy. 

Madison, who before he became the executive 
was secretary of state under Jefferson, was a mem- 
ber of the Constitutional Convention. He took so 
important a share in that body that he was famiharly 
known as the father of the Constitution. 

Monroe will always be remembered as the author 
of the doctrine that bears his name, almost the first 
assertive act of our government upon questions 
other than those of domestic policy. 

John Quincy Adams was a member of the Consti- 
tutional Convention. 

Jackson gave up the profession to become a sol- 
dier and the hero of the battle of New Orleans. 

I have not time to do more than mention the 
names of the other lawyer presidents whose lives 
are within the memory of many of my audience, 
Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Bu- 
chanan, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harri- 
son and McKinley. 

Greatest of all since Washington, was Abraham 
Lincoln, whose name we speak with tender and 
reverent affection, whom the world will always re- 
member as the indomitable leader of our nation in 
its great struggle for union and liberty, himself 
the consummate flower of liberty, the liberator of 
millions of slaves, the man from whose head fell the 
victor's chaplet to be replaced by the martyr's crown. 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 335 

"The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

Was there ever such a galaxy of apostles of free- 
dom as rny legal brethren, with, thank God, but one 
exception, who from Washington to McKinley have 
occupied the presidential chair? How vast their in- 
fluence in the formation of the Republic ! May it 
not be said that to their labors and influence more 
than to those of any other class or profession the 
Nation owes its creation and continuance? 

The cabinets of the presidents necessarily have 
large influence in the guidance of national affairs. 
That of Washington was composed of four mem- 
bers, three of whom were lawyers, among them 
Jefferson and Hamilton. From time to time the 
cabinet has been increased so that at the present 
time it consists of eight members. With the ex- 
ception of Jefferson's cabinet, in which only two 
of the five members were lawyers, the majority of 
every cabinet has been composed of lawyers; and 
in the cabinets of Monroe, John Quincy Adams. 
Jackson, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Bu 
chanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Arthur, and 
Cleveland at times every member was a lawyer. 

Among the great cabinet officers have been Jeffer 
son, Hamilton, Marshall, Monroe, Adams, Calhoun 
Clay, Webster, Taney, Seward, Evarts, Chase and 
Stanton, without the mention of whose names our 
history would be incomplete. In recent years three 



336 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

lawyer secretaries of the navy, Whitney, Tracy and 
Long, conceived and constructed the White Squad- 
ron, which has carried our flag in triumph to 
Southern seas, added new territory to our dominion 
and renewed the luster of our navy's ancient renown. 

THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 

The National period, upon which we entered at 
the close of the Civil War, has been fruitful in re- 
sults which no one could have anticipated as likely 
to occur during the nineteenth century. In this 
period the great questions of reconstruction and of 
equal rights without regard to race, color or pre- 
vious condition of servitude have been firmly es- 
tablished by amendments to the Constitution. Our 
population has grown from thirty millions to 
seventy-six millions. We have fought the altruistic 
fight for our Cuban neighbor in her struggle for 
independence of Spanish tyranny, and are now pro- 
tecting her in establishing her new government. 
W'e have taken our proper rank among the nations 
of the earth, who must hereafter reckon with us 
upon all international questions affecting the prog- 
ress of humanity. 

In all the great work of this important period my 
legal brethren have continued to be in evidence. As 
presidents, cabinet officers, legislators, governors, 
judges and lawyers, in court and camp, in conven- 
tion and congress, they have been moulding public 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 337 

opinion. They have become soldiers and have aided 
in the acquisition and defense of new territory and 
have been selected as governors and commissioners 
to arrange for the government of our new provinces. 
In every public position the profession has been 
fully represented. Indeed, the people seem to think 
that it is not possible to conduct public affairs with- 
out their assistance. This result is largely owing 
to the fact that bench and bar have always been 
watchful of the characters of their members. When 
judges have been unjustly attacked the bar has risen 
for their defense; when judges have become cor- 
rupt the bar has instituted proceedings against them. 
Yet only three United States judges have been im- 
peached. In this State, there has been only one suc- 
cessful impeachment of a Supreme Court judge, that 
of Barnard in 1874. Proceedings were commenced 
at about the same time against Judge Cardozo, who 
resigned office to avoid conviction. These proceed- 
ings were instituted by lawyers, notwithstanding 
the great danger of revengeful action upon them- 
selves and their clients, involved in an unsuccessful 
prosecution. 

No careful student of history can fail to be im- 
pressed by the influence which the legal profession 
has exerted upon civilization and progress in all 
nations and in all ages, and especially in our own 
country during the closing century. 

Nor is this fact a cause of wonder. The State is 
founded upon law. The lawyer from study and 



338 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

experience knows, or ought to know, what laws are 
best adapted to changing conditions, for as condi- 
tions change, the laws necessarily change with them. 
In our democratic land he naturally gravitates to 
public affairs. Like the minister, he is an oracle of 
village life, and in cities he is accustomed to deal 
with civic questions. He has always been what 
the liberal training of his profession makes him, a 
champion of freedom and a leader of human thought 
and progress. The world has made vast advance 
in all matters of legislation and law, justice and 
liberty during the present century, and the lawyer 
has always been in the forefront of the struggle. 

Since the birth of the Republic, every national 
Congress has been very largely composed of law- 
yers. I need only to refer as a living example to 
the present Congress, consisting of four hundred 
and forty-seven members, of whom three hundred 
and twelve are lawyers, while, so far as I have been 
able to ascertain, there is only one clergyman in the 
Senate and one in the House of Representatives, 
and each of these has increased his knowledge by 
the study or the practice of law. 

There have been also many great lawyers and 
judges who have not been prominently connected 
with political affairs, whose influence has been pre- 
eminent in the formation of our institutions upon 
permanent foundations. Among these the world 
recognizes the names of Story, Kent, Wheaton, 
Rufus Choate, O'Connor and Parsons. 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 339 

It seems germain to my subject to speak of one 
of the greatest dangers to the continuance of our 
modern civihzation, against which the pu'bHcist must 
guard. I refer to the troubles which arise out of 
labor agitations. Working men have begun to feel 
their power in political affairs as never before. They 
have become a new power with which all govern- 
ments must reckon. The masses are seething with 
unrest and yearning for part and parcel in govern- 
ment. They are groping in the discontent of social- 
ism and anarchy, not knowing fully their own de- 
sires and intent, though determined to make their 
influence felt for the betterment of their condition. 

I stood once at the summit of Vesuvius. Italy lay 
peacefully at its foot. The sun was shining with 
unclouded brilliancy upon the most beautiful bay 
and landscape in the world. Creeping cautiously 
through the masses of cinders to the edge of the cra- 
ter, I looked down upon that sea of molten horror, 
tossing in fiery waves hundreds of feet below. The 
smoke rose in sulphurous, fetid, horrid fumes. 
Suddenly, as if gripped by some mighty convulsion, 
the volcano belched high into air great masses of 
burning cinder; we fled in peril of our lives. Here, 
I thought, is the physical picture of society as it ex- 
ists in these latest years. Smooth upon the surface 
as the smiling Bay of Naples and the sunny plains 
of Italy, there are elements of unbridled passions, 
of communism and anarchy, which need only a torch 
to kindle another 'bloodv revolution like that of 



340 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

France in 1789, the Lord Gordon riots of 1780, the 
negro riots in New York in 1863, or the assassina- 
tion of president, czar and king within our own 
memory. 

But after all, the danger is more fancied than 
real, for the American workingman is essentially a 
law-abiding citizen and respects the law, and by 
the very fact of his participation in its creation feels 
himself to be a member of the body politic. He will 
be taught by education and convinced by experi- 
ence that his individual welfare is consistent with 
and dependent upon the general good. 

As we stand to-night in the closing hours of 
the closing year of the closing century that has seen 
such vast and progressive development, we ask our- 
selves whether our civilization and national insti- 
tutions will be permanent. 

It needs no prophetic vision to foresee our im- 
mediate future. For two centuries our feeble colo- 
nies barely fringed the Atlantic shore, their very ex- 
istence hanging in the balance. Then, under the 
inspiration of freedom, at the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century, the new nation began its magnif- 
icent march of settlement, westward over the blue 
ridges of the Alleghanies, westward over the val- 
ley of the Mississippi, westward over prairie and 
desert, still westward over the Rocky Mountains 
and the Sierras, until, like the swelling tide that fills 
the shore, it has covered the continent from sea to 
sea with the resistless flow of population, making 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 341 

complete the chain of civiHzation which shall bind 
in one common brotherhood all the nations of the 
world. It is an impressive thought that after many 
centuries civilization, which began in Asia and 
swept westward over Europe and the Atlantic, has 
now crossed the Western hemisphere, and from 
the shores of California and Oregon looks across 
the Pacific to Asia, where it had its birth. It is 
this march which Lord Rosebery predicts will 
eventually result in the sublime transference of po- 
litical power and the seat of empire from the East- 
ern to the Western hemisphere. 

Every nation has been born in struggle and 
nursed in blood and battle. This great nation was 
born in the civil and religious struggles of Europe. 
It was baptized in the blood of our patriot ancestors, 
shed to secure our freedom; it was cleansed of the 
foul stain of human slavery in that other torrent 
of blood which for four sorrowful years flowed from 
wounds fraternally inflicted. It was sanctified by 
the war for Cuban independence, when the armed 
hand of the nation was stretched out to protect a 
brave and patient people perishing under the cruel 
tyranny of Spain. And we may reverently say that 
God approved that decision and gave our country 
expanding territory and her proper rank among the 
nations of the earth. I am reminded of the words 
of Lowell : 



342 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to de- 
cide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for good or evil 
side; 

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the 
bloom or blight. 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the 
right. 

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and 
that light." 

The present standing of America is secure. But 
what of the remote future? Will the fate of an- 
cient nations be our own ? In the coming centuries 
shall we sink into insignificance, or into an oblivion 
which will leave nothing but a memory of our pass- 
ing grandeur? Will the generations of a new and 
later civilization look upon the ruins of our capitols 
and cathedrals, covered with the dust of ages, as 
we look upon the temples and palaces of Babylon 
and Nineveh, or the columns and arches of the 
Roman Forum, or the Parthenon, beautiful in its 
decay, crowning the Acropolis? In cheerful opti- 
mism I answer, No. 

On the contrary, I believe that we are building a 
great spiritual university and temple of freedom, a 
university in which mankind will learn the funda- 
mental principles of justice and of civil and religious 
liberty; a temple of such catholicity that all men 
will gather in its broad aisles and bow before its 
altars to learn obedience to the law of the one liv- 
ing and true Gk)d; that both university and temple 
will be so majestic in proportions, so massive in 



THE BENCH AND BAR. 343 

construction that when our material structures shall 
have crumbled into dust they and their principles 
will endure ; that the time is coming when there will 
be neither kingdom nor aristocracy, but govern- 
ments founded only upon the consent of the gov- 
erned, and based on civil and religious liberty and 
the law of God, and finally, that our nation will 
resist time and survive decay, so long and only so 
long as a pure and independent Bench and a fear- 
less and patriotic Bar remain to defend our liberties ; 
so long as the nation sacredly cherishes the great 
principles of freedom and equal rights to all its 
citizens ; so long as it fears God and obeys his com- 
mands; so long as it establishes and maintains just 
and righteous laws, and so long as it deals justly 
with other nations and regards all men as brothers, 
children of one Father, even the Lord God 
Almighty. 



XI. 

SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 



345 



XI. 

SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE 
REVOLUTION* 

BY DR. SIDNEY H. CARNEY, JR. 
Secretary of the New York Historical Society. 

To few among us to-day is time permitted in 
which to tread the many avenues of learning. It 
is an era of Specialization. 

Where the physician of a century-and-a-half ago 
browsed over the " Adventures of Count Albert- 
us," " All for Love, or the World Well Lost," 
" Clare on Fluids," *' Cheselden's Anatomy," 
" Devil on Crutches in England," " Martius' 
Philosophy," " Witches and Wizards," " Salmon's 
Geography," and kindred standard literature of 
that period, we find to-day that the Specialist de- 
votes his entire energy to one sub-division of the 
great whole, — and considers himself fortunate in- 
deed if he may glance at one daily paper! 

* An address delivered before the Society of the Sons of the 
Revolution of the State of New York, at Delmonico's, April 19, 
I901. From the Year Book of the Society. By permission. 
349 



350 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Formerly, there was not that liberality of 
thought and action in connection with scientific 
research with which we are so familiar. 

It was only twenty-five years before the out- 
break of the War of the Revolution, that two of 
New York's great men, Drs. Middleton and Bard, 
made what is said to have been the first injection 
of the blood-vessels of the human body in this 
country. 

To-day, the latest research in Physiology, 
Chemistry, Surgery, Psychology and Bacteriology 
and the other departments of learning, finds its 
way into the homes of millions, through the 
modern newspaper, which often, in a single Sun- 
day edition, contains more scientific information 
than was to be acquired in the entire library of the 
Revolutionary practitioner. 

Dr. Jones, of this city, who was, as you may re- 
call, physician to Washington and Franklin, said 
that, " among the requirements essential for a 
surgeon, he ought to have firm, steady hands; be 
able to use both alike; a strong, clear sight, and 
above all, a mind calm and intrepid, yet humane 
and compassionate, avoiding every appearance of 
terror and cruelty to his patients amidst the most 
severe operations." 

Dr Jones did not mention any details of the 
tragic battle-fields ; the noise and confusion ; the 
air heavy with dust and the fumes of exploded 
powder ; nor of the personal danger to those of 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 35I 

the medical staff who, although non-combatants, 
were always shining marks for their foes — seven 
being killed at one operating-table, one after 
another, while doing all in their skill to mitigate 
the ghastly results of so-called civilization. 

No, — it was taken for granted that " While 
Speculative Philosophers were disputing about 
the origin of Evil and foundation of Morals, and 
furious bigots were contending for different modes 
of faith, — that the practical good man would en- 
deavor to employ himself in alleviating those evils 
which he found incident to human nature," — and 
thus would give their lives readily, gladly, for 
their fellow-men and their native land. 

Imbued with such high ideals, we can readily 
understand how Drs. Jones, Samuel Bard and 
their colleagues were chiefly instrumental in start- 
ing, in 1771, the New York Hospital. 

It should not be forgotten that in 1688 a hos- 
pital existed here in New Amsterdam, established 
through the labors of Drs. Hendricksen, Varre- 
vangerand Kierstede, of which institution Hilletje 
Wilburch was matron. But as a rule, those ill 
with contagious diseases had to rely on the tender 
care of nurses, noble women, who gave up their 
lives to this work. One of these women, during 
twenty-one years, devoted herself to the care of 
smallpox cases, and finally had to petition the 
Assembly, in 1745, for remuneration. 

In the year prior to the outbreak of the War, 



352 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 

the Physicians in Ordinary at the New York 
Hospital, the cellar of wliich, by-the-vvay, was 
reserved for insane patients, — were Drs. Peter 
Middleton, John Jones, Samuel Bard and Malachi 
Treat. 

Dr. Malachi Treat was Professor of Medicine 
in King's College, our present Columbia, in 1775, 
and he was also surgeon of a company of militia 
called the German Fusiliers. To him the New 
York Provincial Council turned when, in 1776, 
advice was needed as to the selection of a site for 
a suitable Soldiers' Hospital. The following year 
Dr. Treat was appointed Physician General of the 
hospitals for the Northern Department, and in 
1780, upon the reorganization of the Hospital 
Department, he was made Chief Hospital Pliysi- 
cian. He died in 1795, having contracted yellow 
fever while serving as health officer of this port. 

The company of militia with wliich Dr. Treat 
was identified, was but one of the several in the 
First New York Battalion, under Colonel John 
I>esher, some of the company names being " The 
Prussian Blues," " Swego Rangers," " Hearts* 
Oak," " Grenadiers," " Light Infantry," "Sports- 
men," etc., etc. 

While King's College Avas disorganized by the 
presence of the English troops, there were no de- 
grees conferred and, in their place, certificates 
were given to those qualified in medical learning, 
similar to the following : 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN" THE REVOLUTION. 353 

"New York, Aug. 5, 1776. 
These are to certify that I have carefully ex- 
amined Mr. Henry White, both in Physick and 
Surgery, and have the pleasure to inform all whom 
it may concern that he is well acquainted with the 
Principles and Practice of both, and qualified for 
discharging his duty in either. 

Malachi Treat." 

That patriotic enthusiasm fired the souls of 
practically all the profession, need hardly be 
questioned. 

From the first news of the proposed march on 
Concord, obtained by Dr. Joseph Warren, and 
which he delivered to Dr. Samuel Prescott, Dawes 
and Revere, for them to ride and alarm those un- 
prepared for the British, — on through the years of 
struggle, — the medical profession enjoyed a most 
distinguished part, in the field and in the Halls of 
Congress. 

Nine physicians are mentioned as participating 
in the battle, whose anniversary we celebrate this 
evening, while in the Massachusetts Provincial 
Congress, 1 774-1 775, were some twenty-five physi- 
cians, conspicuous among whom were Dr. Joseph 
Warren, who is said to have been the most active 
man on the Lexington field, " Animating every- 
where by his presence and example, his country- 
men to avenge their wrongs on that memorable 
occasion." 
23 



354 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

" Dr. Warren was chosen by the Massachusetts 
Provincial Congress, June 14th, 1775, the Second 
Major-General of their own forces, just two days 
prior to the election of Washington by the General 
Congress as Commander-in-Chief." 

" Dr. Warren went from Cambridge as a volun- 
teer, in throwing up intrenchments by a detach- 
ment of 1,000 men, under Colonel Prescott, on 
Bunker's Hill, where, on the 17th of June, he met 
his death. The historian Ramsey said of him : 
" To the purest patriotism and most undaunted 
bravery, he added the virtues of domestic life, the 
eloquence of an accomplished orator, the wisdom 
of an able statesman * * * * Like Hampden he 
lived, like Hampden he died, universally beloved 
and universally regretted. His many virtues were 
celebrated in an eloquent eulogium written by 
Dr. Rush, in language equal to the illustrious 
subject." 

And yet Dr. Warren was but one among thirty 
other physicians who participated in the Battle of 
Bunker Hill, among whom was Dr. John Brooks, 
later Governor of the State for whose existence 
he fought. Each one of them risked his all, and, 
be it said to the everlasting glory of American 
ideas of chivalrous warfare, the American physi- 
cian and surgeon has always given the same skilled 
attention to the adversary as to his fellow-in-arms. 
On this memorable occasion, England's wounded 
received prompt, tender and skilled attention by 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 355 

Dr. Minot and Dr. John Cummings, the latter 
having had great experience in the French and 
Indian War, and during which he was, for a time, 
a prisoner of the Indians. 

One month after the battle of Bunker Hill, six- 
teen physicians appeared before a Board of Ex- 
aminers, the first of its kind in America, to pass an 
examination for admission in the Regular Army 
as surgeons. They were examined in anatomy, 
ph3^siology, surgery and medicine. Six of them 
being found unqualified, were privately rejected. 

Possibly these rejections were the first cause of 
the subsequent dissatisfaction expressed towards 
some medical officers at the head of the Medical 
Corps, which Corps, as a whole, was practically 
united during the entire war. Jealousy of the in- 
dividual man, not of the Corps, was not unknown 
in those days, as in our own time — indeed, mur- 
murs and grumblings as to food supplied, both in 
quantity and quality, existed then, as in our recent 
Spanish annoyance. But, on the whole, America 
had become, as stated in a letter from Quebec, 
" the Nursery of Heroes," while in a letter from 
Montreal, date of Dec. 16, 1775, is this apprecia- 
tion of our soldiers' valor : 

"■ Our brother soldiers before Quebec have 
thrown up batteries of ice and snow which ex- 
perience has proved to be sufficient. Who but 
Yankoos would have dreamed of such a contrivance, 
and who but enthusiasts for Liberty would carry 
on a siege at such a season of the year ! " 



356 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Even a Loyalist physician wrote to a min- 
isterial officer a few weeks after the Battle of 
June 17 : 

" Eighteen thousand men, brave and determined, 
with Washington and Lee at their head, are no 
contemptible enemy. For the sake of the mis- 
erable Convulsed Empire, solicit Peace, repeal the 
Act, or Britain is undone ! " 

With the transference of the seat of war to the 
southward, came the order for Dr. Morgan to 
move the Military Hospital to New York, which he 
immediately accomplished, reporting to the Com- 
mander-in-Chief in person, on April 22, 1776. 

The population of the city being thus largely 
augmented by the various military organizations, 
there arose need for increased and suitable mili- 
tary hospitals. The Committee of Safety had 
tried to anticipate this necessity, when, on April 6, 
they notified the Treasurer of King's College 
that that building be prepared for the reception 
of sick soldiers. 

The college was prepared, but lost much valu- 
able material as a result, including books given 
by the Earl of Butte, as well as copies of every 
book from Oxford University press, which had 
been presented by that University. Thirty years 
later, some six hundred books were discovered in 
a room in St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway, but the 
major part of the material was lost. 

Several private residences were taken for hos- 



SOME MEDICAL MEiV IN THE REVOLUTION. 357 

pitals, among others, those of Messrs. Apthorpe 
and Oliver Delancy ; Robert Bayard's, at Bloom- 
ingdale, and WilHam Bayard's, at Greenwich. 
Subsequently the British used the Brick Church, 
then on Beekman Street, for a hospital, converting 
the First Presbyterian Church, * on Wall Street, 
into barracks for the soldiers. 

Dr. Jones gave valuable suggestions as to the 
arrangement of the hospitals. He knew from 
personal observation the Hotel Dieu, in Paris, 
which received over 20,000 patients each year, one- 
fifth of whom died in the hospital. He remem- 
bered its triple rows of beds, each bed containing 
four to six patients, and that when he went the 
morning rounds, he had seen the dead lying in 
the beds with the living. 

He believed that the architects held radically 
different views from physicians as to room and air 
space, and we note with satisfaction the step taken 
here in New York to have what was then consid- 
ered a most commodious and well-ventilated hos- 
pital. The wards were to be 36 feet in length, 24 
feet wide and 18 feet in height, each ward to con- 
tain only 8 beds. 

We can barely form an estimate as to the value 
of these hospital arrangements, inasmuch as our 
troops were unable to hold New York, and, in 

* Rev. Joseph Treat, Pastor, who with other clergymen fled 
to New Jersey during the occupancy of New York by the 
'S>n'C\%)a..— Editor. 



358 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

consequence, after the British entered the city, 
the wounded Ameticans, together with the British 
and Hessian prisoners, were sent to Albany, where 
a hospital accommodating 500 men was located. 

Dr. Solomon Drowne, of Providence, R. I., had 
become a member of the Medical Staff of the 
General Hospital, located in King's College, which 
he considered " a very elegant building, and its 
situation pleasant and salubrious." The doctor, 
however, objected to the excessive cost of clothes, 
a pair of drab trousers having the enormous price 
of twelve dollars ! Possibly it would have been 
more economical for him had he done, as did the 
Commander-in-Chief, General Washington, who, 
in a letter dated at Newburgh, Nov. 5, 1782, wrote 
to John Mitchell ; 

"Dear Sir: — 

By Doctr. Craik I send you four half JOES 
— £6 — 9^- — 3<af — , of which appears to be the 
ball* due you allowing the Penn State Paper 
(inj"" hands) at one for four. 

I pray you to get me made by the measure in- 
closed a pair of the neatest and best Leather 
Breeches — I know not at this time who is esteemed 
the most celebrated workman, or I would not 
trouble you in so trifling a matter. Formerly 
there used to be a skin called, I think, the Cara- 
bous, of which very neat Breeches were made. 

Whether they are yet to be had, I know not, 



SOME MEDICAL MEN' IN THE DEVOLUTION. 359 

nor do I know the price of Leather Breeches at 
this day ; but if the money sent is insufficient, the 
deficiency shall be paid on dem*^ . I would beg 
to have them sent to me as soon as possible and 
I shall thank you for reiterating my request that 
they may be made roomy in the Seat and not 
tight in the thighs. They generally made them 
so strait that it is with difficulty they can be 
drawn on, to which I have an utter aversion. 

The measure gives the size I would have them, 
not what they can be brought to by stretching. 
My complim^s to Mrs. Mitchell. 
I am, D-- Sir 

Your most Obed Serv* 

G° Washington" 

Dr. Drownedid not at this time complain of his 
surroundings. He says, "The Quartermaster of 
ye Hospital and his wife reached here a few days 
past (June, 1776), from Boston, since which we 
live in a very elegant manner, compared with 
what we did." 

Later, when the streets were reeking with foul 
odors and even the hospital became a " baleful 
place," he and five other doctors had to ** victual 
and live " outside it, but he was still cheerful, and 
although called the " walking ghost " (his appear- 
ance having been so changed by an attack of 
dysentery), we read in a later letter, " We have 
things pretty clever, except a plentiful scarcity of 



360 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

fleas ; so if you have any to spare in Providence, 
beg you would send down a few by the first con- 
veyance." 

Then we must not overlook the fact that the 
Doctor was enjoying the life of a great metropoli- 
tan city, both professionally and socially, the 
streets filled with generals, aides-de-camp, and the 
more gaudy French Kickerces ; and many novel 
sights were bursting on his view — one of which he 
alluded to in a letter: "There has lately been a 
good deal of attention paid the Tories in this city ; 
some of the worst of them have been carried thro' 
the streets at noon-day — on rails." 

In the letter of June 24, 1776, he briefly de- 
scribes " the Hellish Plot," in which " three of 
General Washington's Life Guards, ye Mayor of 
ye City and a number of tories," were participants, 
the plan being to kill General Washington, 
General Putnam and as many commanding offi- 
cers as possible, first having set the City on fire in 
nine several places; to spike the cannon and blow 
up the magazines — all of which was discovered by 
the Sergeant of the Guards. The Drummer of 
the Guards was to have stabbed the General." 
The Doctor concludes : " The Pretty Fellows are 
in safe custody, and I hope I shall be able to give 
you a better account of them in my next." 

Soldiers were classed as " foul feeders," and 
all acute disorders were given the routine treat- 
ment. " Their stomachs to be cleansed by a 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 3G1 

puke," and "bleeding." If troubled with pain 
in the bowels, a brass syringe with an elastic pipe 
and bellows attached to inject tobacco smoke, 
could be used, if the practitioner had the £2 i,s. od. 
to pay for this apparatus. 

A medical observer of that day earnestly ad- 
vised that any regimental doctor who heard any 
soldier in the ranks or elsewhere cough violently 
and frequently, to at once take away from 10 to 
12 ounces of blood, and feed on boiled water- 
gruel for 24 hours, and keep warm. 

There was, for a time, every opportunity for 
the spread of disease, especially smallpox and 
dysentery. The bedding used by the men was 
of straw or corn husks, which, becoming foul, 
soon paved the way for the spread of contagion. 
Drainage of the camp was not always rigidly en- 
forced. There was either improper or no cloth- 
ing and warmth. Can we wonder that Dr. Rush 
spoke of the early Military Hospitals as " Sinks 
of Human Life"? and that "more citizens were 
lost therein than by the sword " ? 

He it was who, whenever practicable, had his 
patients carried in to apple orchards, where, be- 
neath the trees, they could have fresh air, and 
sunlight sifting through the protecting branches 
above them. 

The following certificate, issued in connection 
with Dr. Drowne's exposure to smallpox when 
his brother Billy was ill with that malady, and 



3G3 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

one as to his personal ability, give an idea of the 
regulations then in force: 

Aug. 6, 1776. 
" These certify that Mr. Drowne has been so 
snwaked and cleansed as that in our opinion, he 
may be permitted to pass into the Country with- 
out danger of communicating smallpox to any one. 
John Scollay, 
Jno Pitts, 
Selectmen of Boston." 

While on Nov. 21, 1776, Dr. Morgan gave him 
this certificate : 

" To all whom it may concern : Tliis is to certify 
that Mr. Solomon Drowne hath served as a mate 
in the General Hospital, the past Campaign, with 
general acceptance and hath performed the Duties 
of his Station with fidelity, — and is recommended 
at his quitting the hospital to the Public, as a 
young gentleman of assiduity and merit, by 
-John Morgan, 
Director-General of the Hospital." 

Dr. Drowne was associated with various mili- 
tary hospitals up to 1780, when he became 
surgeon of the private sloop " Hope," his very 
interesting journal of his experiences therein 
having been printed. 

His professional and social merits endeared him 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 3G3 

to his fellow-men. He became Vice-President of 
the Medical Society of Rhode Island. His 
scientific and other literary contributions to the 
press of the period, including his superb Eulogy 
on Washington, ought to be read before this 
Society. Time alone forbids more than this brief 
mention of this gifted gentleman, whose papers 
and letters have been graciously placed at my 
disposal by his great-grandson, Mr. Henry R. 
Drowne, of this Society. 

The man is yet to be born who will invent a 
Register showing the degrees of Pain. Think of 
the sufferings of our Revolutionary Sires ! There 
were no rubber-tired ambulances to convey weary 
and wounded feet from Valley Forge (the biting 
frosts wounding and maiming the feet, improperly 
shod, if shod at all !), or trains of cars to speed 
northward, where brave, plucky wives and sweet- 
hearts, in quiet garb relieved by snowy kerchief 
and sprigged muslin aprons, attended to the 
domestic duties, outwardly placid, but inwardly 
giving their hearts and nerves a strain only 
equalled by those in actual conflict with the foe, 
and who longed to do something to mitigate the 
sufferings of their dear ones at the front. 

It is true that, once having reached Philadelphia, 
invalids could, for 2i shillings each, take passage 
in " The Flying Machine," which set out early 
every Monday and Thursday morning from the 
" Sign of the Cross," on Third and Chestnut 



S64 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

streets, exchanging passengers the same night at 
Princeton, where a similar " Flying Machine," 
which had left Paulus-Hook Ferry, opposite New 
York, the same morning, conveyed them to that 
city. 

As a rule, medical and surgical treatment was 
given on the spot. In amputations of the thigh, 
the patient was seated in a chair, as more com- 
modious for both patient and operator! 

As mentioned a moment ago, the soldiers* feet 
were often frozen or frost-bitten ; mortification 
would set in, and as a result, removal of the 
metatarsal bones of the foot was of frequent 
occurrence. There was no laughing gas, ether 
or chloroform, none of the local anaesthetics so 
familiar to us. Prior to the time of Ambroise 
Pare, of France, irons at white heat were em- 
ployed to stop hemorrhage from bleeding vessels. 

Pare gave to the world, anew, the ligature for 
securing bleeding vessels, but it is in our own day 
that antiseptically prepared silk and gut ligatures, 
and the hemostatic forceps, which clamp at once 
each large or small vessel, have come. In the 
Revolutionary surgeon's kit, the ligatures were 
made of shoemaker's thread, well waxed. 

If fracture of the skull necessitated the oper- 
ation of trephining, the patient was " conveniently 
seated in a chair, his head firmly held by the 
assistant ! " The steel trephines cost, at that 
time, ;^i \\s. 6(/., when used in a set of two sizes 
and a perforator in a handle and centre-pin key. 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 365 

Here is a circular piece of bone, loaned me by 
our fellow-member, Mr. Henry R. Drowne. This 
was removed from the head of a sergeant in the 
Continental forces by Dr. Drowne. At the time 
of this operation, the Doctor was a very young 
man, and was standing near the operating tent, 
when the unconscious sergeant was brought in 
for examination by the attending surgeons. 

One and all pronounced his condition abso- 
lutely hopeless, and the man was about to be 
carried away from the tent, — to die, — when Dr. 
Drowne asked, and received permission, to oper- 
ate. He cut down, removed this piece of bone, 
raised the depressed fractured bone, relieved the 
pressure on the brain and instantly the sergeant 
called out the concluding portion of the order he 
had been giving when struck down by the enemy. 
The sergeant lived for thirty-five years after this 
episode in his life, and enjoyed perfect health. 

Gentlemen, this is but one of thousands of 
instances where mankind has been served by the 
conscientious practitioner. 

"Ask yon happy little lad, 
Whose legs were crooked and whose back was bad, 
• Who made him straight and put his back at rest ? ' 
Ask of some mother, at whose happy breast 
A new-born babe is held -with joy and pride. 
Who sat beside her and to whom she cried 
For help and comfort in her hour of pain. 
And ask her if she ever cried in vain ? 
Ask of the soldier, back from some campaign, 



306 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

To whom he owes it that he is home again ? 
Ask him who ran to help him when he fell, 
And snatched him from the very jaws of hell, 
Where bullets rained and shells were bursting round, 
And dead and dying cumbered all the ground ; 
Where pestilence and plague, with horrid breath, 
Are stalking through the land, and dealing death, 
Who faces them without a thought of fear ? 
Whose is the voice the sufferer longs to hear ? 
All these the doctor does, has done, will ever do. 
These are his duties, and his pleasures, too — 
Not that he loves to see and hear the pain. 
But loves to make the sufferer smile again." 

As nearly 4,000 physicians participated in the 
War for American Independence, it can be easily 
understood how impossible the task of speaking 
of them at this time other than in a general way. 

Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Dr. 
Matthew Thornton, Dr. Oliver Wolcott and Dr. 
Lyman Hall were members of the Congress that 
declared the Independence of America. 

Among the original members of the Society of 
the Cincinnati in Connecticut, were 16 physicians; 
in Massachusetts, 22 ; in Maryland, 16; in New 
York, 18; in Pennsylvania, 18, and so the num- 
bers might be called, and called again. 

It is sufficient to note that many doctors in 
the Continental Army became captains, majors, 
colonels, and generals. 

What a commentary on the appreciation of the 
general public of the life-work of such gifted men 
as X)r. Benjamin Hush and Dr. William Shippen, 



SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 3G7 

of Philadelphia ; Dr. Arthur Lee, and Dr. Hugh 
Mercer, a general as well, of Virginia: Dr. Bre- 
vard, of North Carolina ; that " mighty writer," 
Dr. David Ramsey, and Dr. Olyphant, of South 
Carolina ; Dr. and Gov. Lyman Hall, Dr. and 
Gov. Brownson, and Dr. N. W. Jones, of Georgia, 
not to mention the celebrities of our own and 
other States. What a commentary, I repeat, it 
is on the appreciation, by the general public, of 
the life-work of such men when among some 
37,000 names sent by the general public to a 
newspaper as deemed worthy of being inscribed 
on the walls of a so-called Hall of Fame, there is 
said to have been not one medical man ! And 
every man whose name is therein inscribed owed 
his life to a physician I 

And so we may take leave of the medical men 
in the Revolution named this evening, confident 
that if their names are not inscribed in Halls of 
Fame, their faithful work has always been honored 
and cherished in the hearts of those who are 
thoughtful and considerate, and that tliey still par- 
ticipate, though sleeping, in building the proudest 
monument on the face of the earth to-day, the Inde- 
pendent United States of America. 



XII. 
COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 



369 



XII. 

COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS 
LIFE* 

We possess nothing more valuable than history. 
History broadens human Hfe by bringing the hfe 
of the one man into touch with the lives of all men. 
History makes us familiar with the shining foot- 
prints of God, who walks eternal among the ages. 
History reveals the issue of moral principles when 
these are acted out in life and are carried to their 
logical ultimatum. History gathers for us the 
treasures of the past, and lays at our feet the ex- 
periences and the accumulations and the attain- 
ments and the ideals of those who have lived 
before us. 

The advantage of living in the nineteenth cen- 
tury is this: we possess the riches of all the cen- 
turies. Is it not something to you that somebody 
cleared the American forests, exterminated the 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn, on the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of 
America. 

373 



374 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

beasts of prey, opened the mines, improved the 
crops, built the cities, erected the schools and the 
churches, and made the civilization into which you 
were born ? The doing of these things, so far as 
you are concerned, constitutes the difference be- 
tween riches and poverty, ignorance and education, 
hardship and luxury, barbarism and civilization. 
There is a difference between 1492 and 1892. The 
difference is tremendous — tremendous here in 
America, tremendous the world over. 

If this be so, why then should we trouble our- 
selves with the past? It is over and gone. We 
have 1892, and that is all we need. Why burrow 
in the past and mine in it? Why? Because this 
is the only way to make it ours and compel service 
from it. This is the only way to find our possi- 
bilities. We must let history tell us what other 
men have done, that we may know what we can 
do. The men of the past who walk the pages of 
history still live ; their ambitions are contagious 
and they inspire us. Let no one despise the past. 
We have not outgrown the need of it ; it has great 
men who are still in advance of us. 

The Christ looks out at us from the past. We 
are not through with the Christ, the Man of Naz- 
areth, who thought and spake and acted eighteen 
hundred years ago. There are others with whom 
we are not through and whom we have not as yet 
overtaken. There are lost arts which we have not 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF ILLS LIFE. 375 

recovered and there is a human genius of the past 
which is still in advance of modern genius. There 
are things in the past which have never since been 
reached. In stability of institutions China has not 
been surpassed. In skill of mechanics Egypt has 
not been reached. How were those great Egyp- 
tian structures which look us in the face reared ? 
The splendor of Assyria- and Babylonia has never 
been equaled. These old kingdoms have been dug 
up by the pick and spade of our day, and we are 
compelled to stand appalled before their ruined 
grandeur. 

Nineteen centuries of Christendom have not 
added to the grace of the Greek column or to the 
strength of the Roman arch. No book of proverbs 
has gone beyond the wisdom of Solomon. The 
sense for beauty in the old Greeks, and the sense 
for organization in the old Romans, and the sense 
for righteousness in the old Jews, can still lead us. 
No one has plucked the laurels from the brow of 
Homer; no brush has stolen a single tint from the 
fame of Apelles ; no chisel has chased a line of 
loveliness from Phidias. The principles of the 
Mosaic legislation, many of them, are still grand ; 
and the works of Plato and Socrates and Aristotle 
are republished to-day, and are quoted as author- 
ities by modern philosophers. Paul's logic and 
thought are as much abreast of the times now as 
they were the day he uttered them. While we 



37G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN RERUBLIC. 

have outgrown the past in ever so many ways, yet 
enough of the greatness of the past remains and 
towers above us to create within us a wholesome 
respect for the past. Where we cannot excel the 
past let us willingly allow it to wear its laurels; let 
us run out on lines on which we can excel. It is 
our privilege to excel where we can, and it is 
equally our privilege to use what we cannot excel. 
If the past has given us any great thing which we 
cannot equal, that is a reason for being thankful to 
the past. 

While there are things belonging to the past 
which we cannot equal, still we are making pro- 
gress. Shakespeare is not equaled, but yet there 
is progress in the coming of Wordsworth and 
Browning and Tennyson, and also in the coming 
of our transatlantic poets, Longfellow and Lowell 
and Whittier. By their coming we own Shake- 
speare none the less ; they are a plus ; they give us 
what Shakespeare does not give us, and they will 
fill a place and do a work which he cannot fill and 
do. Then, besides, there is a growth in this, viz. : 
men, as time has moved on, have become better 
able to understand Shakespeare ; he is more of a 
power than ever before, because of the general and 
universal growth which enables men to use him 
more. What we say of Shakespeare we might also 
say of Paul. Paul has not been equaled, but Paul 
has produced Augustine and Luther and Spurgeon, 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 377 

and the world is better off with Paul plus these men. 
Besides this, because of the spread of Christianity 
there are more people using Paul. All this is growth. 

There will never be another Columbus. There 
will never be an opportunity for any other man 
to do the one thing which he did. Still, there is 
growth and progress in the world. The right use 
of the continent which Columbus unveiled is 
progress. To-day we are really celebrating the 
progress made on the new continent during the 
past four hundred years. We are celebrating 
the period rather than the man. 

This leads me to ask the question. And what of 
the man Columbus as a factor in the past? How 
shall we place him and rate him ? To my mind 
Columbus derives all his importance from the fact 
that God used him and enabled him to do one 
thing which resulted in profit. So far as he him- 
self was concerned, and so far as his plans went, 
he was a mere accident in relation to the grandeur 
of what we to-day find in this New World. 

It is the Columbian era that is everything, and 
not Columbus. He had not the first conception 
of the plan which God was working out. God 
saw the American Republic ; he did not. God 
saw human freedom ; he did not. God saw a new 
world ; he saw only what he supposed was an old 
world. He was only the chisel in the hand of the 
great God Sculptor. What does the chisel know 



378 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of the figure of beauty locked up in the marble? 
Nothing. But it matters not that the chisel is 
ignorant if the sculptor only have the knowledge. 
If the sculptor have in his soul the glowing ideal, 
the Apollo, the Venus, the Moses, will as a neces- 
sity step out from the marble into the vision of the 
admiring world. It is God over man, ruling and 
planning and working out His glorious and perfect 
ideal for the human race, that carries the security 
and progress of the human race. This is the high- 
est thing that I can say of Columbus : he was an 
instrument in the hand of God, whereby God 
chiseled out the future according to the pattern 
of an infinite ideal. 

In the discovery of America God is everything; 
He was the only intelligent actor; He alone saw 
what relation the opening of America sustained to 
the civilization which was to follow. This being 
true, I argue that one of the lessons which Amer- 
ica should learn from the study of its own history 
is this : God has a mission for America, God has a 
claim upon America, and America should joyfully 
and voluntarily work out its mission and should 
absolutely and whole-heartedly give itself up to 
God. 

In giving ourselves to the study of the discovery 
of America, let us put in the forefront of our think- 
ing this fact : the discovery of America was not the 
simple and instantaneous affair which it is tacitly 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 379 

assumed to be ; it was a long process. It was not 
an event at all ; it was an evolution. 

There is a pre-Columbian history and there is 
a post-Columbian history, and both of these are 
as important as the history of the man Columbus 
himself. The former opened the way for Colum- 
bus and made him a possibihty ; the latter took up 
what he did, and developed it, and made it effective. 

Without the after explorers, the Cabots, Amer- 
icus Vespucius, Magellan, Cortes, De Soto, Balboa, 
La Salle, Champlain, and Hudson, the discovery of 
Columbus would have been like the discoveries 
which preceded it — it would have been a compar- 
atively fruitless affair. It is equally true that 
Columbus needed those who preceded him in 
order to his making as well as those who followed 
him in order to his development. His inspiration 
as an explorer grew out of what preceded him. 

Let us turn a few pages of the pre-Columbian 
history and see how the world was working up to 
his one great event, his first voyage — for this first 
voyage was really the only thing in Columbus's 
life that had any glory in it. Pre-Columbian his- 
tory tells us that Columbus was not the first dis- 
coverer of America; he was only one discoverer 
among many ; he was only the recoverer of 
America. At the time the bold Genoese planned 
his scheme of reaching the Indies by a westward 
route, documents were in existence, the Scandina- 



380 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

vian sagas, giving particulars of several visits to the 
Northern American continent five hundred years 
before. From these writings we gather the fol- 
lowing: 

Iceland was settled by the Norsemen A.D. 874. 
From Iceland the Norsemen pushed up to Green- 
land. Eric the Red founded a settlement there in 
986 ; this settlement he named after himself, Erics- 
fiord. One of .Eric's companions was an Icelander 
named Bardson, who had a son, Biron, then absent 
in Norway. When Biron came back to Iceland 
he was told that his father had gone to Greenland. 
He at once determined to follow him. On this 
voyage contrary winds bore him away from Green- 
land and carried him to the coast of North Amer- 
ica. As this land did not correspond with the de- 
scription he had of Greenland, he refused to land. 
Turning his course northward, he continued until 
he reached Greenland. The distance from the 
southern point of Greenland to Labrador is only 
six hundred miles, but little more than the distance 
from Norway to England. 

Biron was the first European to discover the 
shores of North America. This was nothing in 
itself, but it led to something further. Biron re- 
lated his experience to Eric, and Leif, the son of 
Eric, fitted out an expedition to go and explore 
this land. He sailed in the year 1000 A.D., with 
a crew of twenty- five men. In four days they 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF I/LS LIFE. 3S1 

came to Labrador, after that to Nova Scotia ; from 
here they sailed until they reached an island which 
they called Vineland, because of its abundance of 
grapes. This Island was somewhere ofT the coast 
of Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Here they 
erected huts and gave the settlement the name of 
Leifsbuthir. 

It is to Leif Ericson that Boston has erected a 
monument on Commonwealth Avenue, its leading 
avenue. Leif Ericson returned to Iceland, and 
the accounts which he gave of America caused an- 
other expedition to sail, 1004 A.D., underThorwald. 
Thorwald landed on a promontory below Cape 
Cod, Massachusetts. Here he was attacked by the 
Indians. In the battle he received a wound which 
proved fatal. His last words were the request, 
" Let me be buried on yonder promontory, which 
I so admire." His followers carried out his request 
and then returned home. This was the first white 
man's grave on our continent. 

The third expedition was a failure. It was 
under the third son of Eric, who sailed with his 
wife, Gudrida, the first white woman explorer to 
come to the shores of America. Its object was to 
bring back the body of Thorwald, buried on the 
New England promontory. This expedition sailed 
from Iceland, but when it reached Greenland 
Thorstein died. The next spring his widow 
brought the ship back to Iceland. 



382 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

In the summer of the following year, 1006, a 
much more important expedition was fitted out. 
It was under the command of Thorfinn the Hope- 
ful. Thorfinn, captivated by the charms of Gud- 
rida, Thorstein's widow, married her and brought 
into his life her daring and courage. There were 
three ships and one hundred and forty men in this 
expedition, a larger expedition than that of Colum- 
bus. As this was an attempt to found a permanent 
colony, all sorts of necessaries were taken on board 
the ships, including live stock and domesticanimals. 

This expedition came down as far as Martha's 
Vineyard and anchored in Buzzard's Bay. While 
here one of the captains of the company, Thorhall 
by name, was despatched with a small ship to look 
for the settlement of Leif Ericson. This man had 
a most untoward fate. A westerly gale took him 
and drove him right across the Atlantic to the coast 
of Ireland, where he and his crew were all made 
slaves. Thorhall, although against his will, was 
the first to hold the honor of sailing right across 
the Atlantic Ocean from shore to shore. And, 
what is still more remark^le, this first vovage 
from the one continent to the other, in a temperate- 
zone latitude, was from west to east, from the 
New World to the Old World. 

Meanwhile Thorfinn prosecuted his journey 
farther south and founded a colony. Here, in this 
American colony, Thorfinn and Gudrida were 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 383 

blessed .by the birth of a son, the first native-born 
American of European parents. The new son re- 
ceived the name Snorre. He was taken to Iceland 
when the colony, after great hardships, returned 
home, and afterward he became a famous scholar 
and bishop. Among his lineal descendants is 
included Thorwaldsen, the famous sculptor. How 
strange to think that the great Norwegian sculptor's 
genealogy should come by the way of America! 
It is- supposed that Snorre wrote the sagas from 
which we have derived this information about these 
voyages of the hardy Norsemen, the most daring 
mariners of ancient times. 

Had the Icelandic explorers only possessed what 
Columbus possessed, viz., firearms to enable them 
to successfully defend themselves against the In- 
dians, North America would have been the first to 
have been Europeanized. A race of men equal to 
any upon the globe would have been here. But, 
as it was, nothing came out of these explorations 
save that a few furs were taken to Iceland and a 
cargo or two of American timber. 

The discovery by the Norsemen was not the 
only pre-Columbian discovery of America. Fred- 
erick Saunders, the librarian of the Astor Library, 
New York, has published the story of another 
pre-Columbian discovery. His story is the story 
of a Welsh colony which, under the leadership of 
Prince Modoc of Wales, settled in the twelfth cen- 



381 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

tury among the red men of the West. This colony 
continued to preserve its native speech and cus- 
toms for five hundred years. This accounts for 
the puzzling wonder discovered in after times, 
viz., certain clans of Indians who spoke the Welsh 
vernacular. They received their speech from this 
Welsh colony. 

There is still another story to be noticed. It is 
in effect this. In 1482, ten years before the voy- 
age of Columbus, a Spanish pilot named Sanchez, 
while attempting a passage between Madeira and 
the. Canaries, was driven from his course by a storm 
and landed on the shores of an island said to be 
Haiti. Subsequently this pilot came to Lisbon and 
found lodgment with Columbus, to whom he re- 
lated the facts, and at whose house he subsequently 
died. 

How much inspiration Columbus got from the 
Norsemen we cannot assert, but this we can assert : 
he sailed as far north as Iceland, where the Scandi- 
navian sagas were which contained the stories of the 
Norsemen voyagers. The air of his age was full 
of the spirit of navigation, and he breathed that 
air. He had the writings of Marco Polo and John 
de Mandeville. Both of these men were audacious 
romancers and explorers. They had pushed to the 
very limits of the East, and their accounts of its 
gold and luxury set all Europe on fire with a de- 
sire to possess the treasures of the East. The art 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 385 

of printing had brought out of their hiding-places 
the old classics, and Columbus had these. Some 
of these spoke of an Atlantic land. Columbus had 
married the daughter of a distinguished explorer. 
While a girl she had made several hazardous voy- 
ages with her father and was an enthusiast herself. 
Through her Columbus came into possession of 
all the results of her father's experience, as she 
inherited his charts and journals. 

But, above all, the famous letters of Toscanelli 
had been written. This scholar in his letters 
openly advocated the practicability of reaching 
Japan and China by sailing directly west. This 
was precisely what Columbus attempted to do; 
this is what he thought he had done, and he died 
thinking so. He died ignorant of the fact that it 
was a new world that he gave Castile and Leon. 

We have now reached the story of Columbus 
himself. For eighteen years he cherished his vision ; 
for eighteen years he believed in himself. This 
w^as the secret of his power. For eighteen years 
he knocked in vain at the doors of the courts of 
the reigning monarchs of Europe. At last he won 
the confidence of that queenly woman, Isabella. 
She became the power back of Columbus and the 
power that sustained him all through his Atlantic 
career. It was a woman's faith and a woman's 
smile of encouragement that were back of the 
effective discovery of America, and this woman 



38G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

came upon the scene at the critical moment, the 
moment of peril. 

The little fleet of three vessels, the Santa Maria, 
the Pinta, and the Nina, sailed from Palos August 
3, 1492. The three crews consisted of about one 
hundred men in all. How were these crews re- 
cruited? Men were not anxious to go on such a 
foolhardy journey ; they peopled the ocean with 
all manner of horrid monsters. They had no faith 
in Columbus; they looked upon him as a man not 
rightly balanced in mind. It was therefore difficult 
to get a crew. Special inducements were offered : 
immunity from the pursuit of justice was offered; 
criminals were offered pardon if they would go; 
debtors were offered release from all obligations if 
they would go. The fleet was made up of run- 
away criminals and debtors. The character of the 
fleet accounts for the after mutinies and the after 
dangers of Columbus, who was at the mercy of 
such men. Nevertheless the expedition was a 
success. 

Columbus successfully handled his crew. I do 
not need to relate the sufferings of the voyage, nor 
tell of the hopes and the fears. To me the thrill- 
ing part of the story is the end — reaching land just 
when hope was about to become despair. The 
first thing that cheered the crew were the signs of 
approaching shores. Herbage carried out by the 
tide floated around the ships. Land birds, with 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 387 

flashing plumage as brilliant as the hues of the 
rainbow, circled in the air overhead ; they perched 
on the topmasts and poured out their thrilling 
songs of welcome. 

Lamartine tells us that a Httle bird's nest, built 
on a branch which the wind had broken off, and 
full of eggs on which the parent bird was sitting, 
gracefully floated by one of the ships, now rising 
and now falling upon the swelling waves. That, 
without a doubt, meant land, and land very close 
at hand. All these were voices from the shores. 
They put soul into the care-worn and exhausted 
sailors. The last night of sailing has come, and all 
the sails are tightly reefed. The ships draw near 
into a realm of intangible mystery. There is no 
sleep for a single soul ; all minds are kindled with 
a fever of intellectual suspense. Columbus walks 
the upper deck and scans the horizon with his eager 
eye. It is pitch-dark. Suddenly he stops. What 
is it that gleams out yonder between sea and sky? 
He looks with all his might. What is it ? As God 
lives, it is a light — a light ! Yes, but vi^hat sort of 
a light? It cannot be a star; it is not diamond- 
pointed, as God's stars are ; it is ragged and flick- 
ering, like every light of human kindling. Alas! 
it is gone ; it was the illusion of an overwrought 
brain. No ; there it is again ; it moves — it waves ; 
it is a torch-light upon some shore. Hark ! a great 
boom sounds from the PinH; her guns sound again 



388 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and again. God be praised ! Her crew, too, has 
seen the light on the shore. It is all settled, for 
that is land, and that is a light on the shore carried 
by an Indian hand. The voyage is a success. 
Columbus has won his greatest glory. 

You know what followed — the landing the next 
morning, the setting up of the cross, the prayer to 
God, and the song of praise. You know the re- 
turn to Spain — the reception by king and queen, 
the procession at Barcelona, with its American 
Indians in front, its American products, its gold 
and spices, and its treasures. You know, too, the 
enthusiasm for exploration which followed, and 
how quickly a new expedition was fitted out with 
a different type of fleet and crew. A sky-rocket 
of success had gone up into the sky, and brilliant 
showers of enthusiasm fell all over Europe. 

We have passed in our narrative the zenith of 
Columbus's glory. There was nothing great after 
this. There were voyages, but they were fruit- 
less ; there were mutinies, cruelties, slavery, disap- 
pointment, displacements, sickness, chains, poverty, 
neglect, a broken heart, death. When Queen Isa- 
bella died Columbus lost his only influential friend. 
Ferdinand, the king, only trifled with him. Co- 
lumbus had cost him more money than he had 
brought in. All his discoveries, from a mone- 
tary point of view, were failures ; but money, 
riches, these were the things Ferdinand wanted 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 389 

and these were the things Columbus had promised 
to secure. 

The story of Columbus's death is a sad one. 
He died neglected and forsaken; he died so ob- 
scurely that his death was scarcely known; he 
died in a little miserable room, bare and unsightly, 
the only ornaments being the chains which bound 
him when he was sent home from America as a 
prisoner. The priest was there and a few atten- 
dants, but that was all. These tell us that he said, 
" Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," 
and then all was over. 

Do you wonder that he died unnoticed and for- 
gotten? The reason was, others had pushed past 
him in the rush of the age. The exploits of other 
voyagers had caught the public ear and monopolized 
public attention. Americus Vespucius had returned 
from his second voyage and was talking to all Eu- 
rope of things Columbus knew nothing about. The 
Cabots had been to North America and were talk- 
ing about what they had found there. Columbus 
never set foot upon North America. Balboa and 
Magellan had already completed their apprentice- 
ship and were on their way to the Pacific Ocean. 
Already the fishermen from Portugal were plying 
their vocation upon the banks of Newfoundland 
with profit, and Valasco, the Spaniard, was on his 
way to the St. Lawrence. The daring and the 
success of others overshadowed Columbus, and he 



390 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

was lost sight of by the great world. This was the 
reason he was allowed to die in the lonely and un- 
noticed way in which he did die. 

Such is the story of Columbus told in a broken, 
fragmentary way. What now is our judgment 
with regard to him? He is not the Columbus 
who was the object of our hero-worship when we 
were children. The search-light of history has 
cleared his life of myths and has completely obliter- 
ated the Columbus of romance. It is shown that 
most of the thrilling stories about Columbus which 
have captivated us are to be regarded as apocry- 
phal. The world hitherto has been worshiping an 
idealized man and not the real man. Columbus 
was not a saint. I say this in the interest of ac- 
curate scholarship. Such works as those of Henry 
Harriss and Justin Winsor, the librarian of Harvard, 
and Dr. Adams, the late president of Cornell, show 
that Columbus can never be canonized on merit of 
character. His character is a thing exceedingly 
problematical. 

The works of these scholars which I have men- 
tioned are all written in the interest of the truth 
and after the modern idea of fairness and impar- 
tiality in biography-writing. The old idea of the 
biographer was this : he must be the eulogist and 
apologist and advocate of his hero. The modern 
idea of the biographer is this : he must first and 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 391 

always seek the facts and tell the truth about the 
man whose biography he writes. 

These are some of the facts in the story of 
Columbus. He was a pirate in the early part of 
his life ; he sailed several times with the Portuguese 
slave-ships to the coast of Guinea to capture slaves. 
In his journal he admits that land was first seen 
and announced by Roderigo de Triana, of the 
Pinta, at two o'clock, October 12th; but on his 
return to Spain he set up the demand for himself 
that he first saw land, and claimed and received 
from the sovereigns the special money which had 
been offered as a reward to the man who should 
first see the land. His will shows that his son 
Fernando was born out of wedlock. His first 
letters glow with accounts of the gentleness of the 
Indians ; he praises their hospitality. When his 
vessel was shipwrecked they gave him every pos- 
sible aid ; some of them even shed tears of sym- 
pathy. You know what followed, how he repaid 
this kindness and love of the Indians. I cannot 
speak of the horrors inflicted upon the Indian 
women. And there was no protest from Colum- 
bus ; nay, he made excuses for the conduct of his 
brutal crew. Because husbands protected their 
wives and daughters and declared war to the hilt 
of the knife, he captured and enslaved the red men 
and shipped whole cargoes of Indians as slaves to 



392 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Spain. This he did in the face of the rebuke ad- 
ministered to him by Queen Isabella. 

He advocated and prosecuted the slave-trade as 
a means of procuring riches for Spain. His chief 
aim in all that he did was riches. Above all things 
he was eager for gold and fame and titles and per- 
sonal advancement. But was there no religion 
in his life? There was. It was not nineteenth- 
century religion, however. He always carried the 
cross with him, and he always said he would devote 
his gains to a crusade to take the Holy Sepulcher 
out of the hands of the infidel Moslems, That 
constituted religion in his day. Charles V. was 
religious; Philip II. was religious; they erected 
the cross everywhere, and in the name of the cross 
committed all manner of crimes. The religion of 
Columbus was akin to their religion. 

One reason why we should be thankful to-day 
is that religion has grown since the day of Colum- 
bus. To be religious after his kind to-day would 
put a man behind the prison bars and blackball his 
character out of the fellowship of the true church 
of God. What I rejoice in to-day is this : the 
world has outgrown Columbus and the religion of 
Columbus, and demands an infinitely higher type 
of manhood. 

When I put Columbus upon the background of 
1892 I can find nothing in him to admire but his 
genius, and his faith in himself, and his push. 



COLUMBUS: THE RES-ULTS OF HIS LIFE. 393 

Following- his faith and genius, he performed a 
work he did not know he was performing, and be- 
came a benefactor of the world by accident. If 
you wish to respect Coluir.b:/* vou must keep him 
back in 1492. 

One act of this man is all that I celebrate, viz., 
his running the prow of the Santa Maria upon the 
American shore. I celebrate the period which 
follows that act; I celebrate the progress which 
God has evolved by means of the years between 
1492 and 1892. 

Farewell, Columbus. I honor you back there 
in 1492. You are better than Ferdinand; you are 
better than Bobadilla ; you are better than Ovando. 
I deplore the treatment you received from these ; 
it was unjust and cruel. You are better than 
Charles V. and Philip II., but I prefer the nine- 
teenth century. I prefer liberty to slavery. I 
prefer the policy of William Penn to the policy of 
the bullet and the knife in dealing with the Indians. 
I prefer the virtue that respects the womanhood of 
all races to the virtue that can keep silent because 
the womanhood being trampled underfoot is that 
of an alien race. I celebrate the period ; I celebrate 
the fact that we are four centuries away from 
Columbus. As an American I celebrate America, 
American progress, American opportunity. 

Let me give you some of the points which I 
keep before my mind as an incentive to this Co- 



394 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

lumbian celebration. We are celebrating the science 
of discovery and not the science of war. 

This indicates a new epoch in history-making, 
and to me there is no better index of advance 
than this new epoch. What has history been 
hitherto ? What has controlled history ? Who 
have figured upon the pages of history, captivat- 
ing eye and heart and making the future of man- 
kind? These are leading questions. Tell me 
what history is, and I will forecast for you the 
future. 

History has a power parallel to the power of fine 
painting. In the art salons in the palace of Ver- 
sailles there are miles and miles of battle scenes. 
Any one can tell what the education gotten through 
the eye by these pictures means. It means the 
domination of France by the spirit of militarism. 
Put other pictures in that national art-gallery, 
pictures of the leading French scientists, pictures 
illustrative of their experiments, pictures showing 
their marvelous triumphs, and you will make the 
rising generation scientists and give the spirit of 
science the domination of the land. 

I want to assert it here that, according to my 
thinking, it is a gross outrage upon all the prin- 
ciples of Christianity when Christendom is busy 
making swords and spears and Catling guns and 
ironclads. When it is busy doing this it is clash- 
ing with God's pacific purposes and smiting the 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 395 

cross with lightning. War and the cross are as 
much in antagonism as were the cruel slavery of 
Columbus, forced upon the Indians, and the dying 
love of Jesus, symbolized by the cross which he 
erected upon American shores. 

I hold history largely responsible for the exis- 
tence of war. History is written in such a way as 
to make war popular. Who walk the pages of his- 
tory ? Warriors, and they are represented as the 
great heroes of the world — almost the sole heroes 
of the world. They crowd all others into the 
background. History must be rewritten. War 
heroes must be made to take a subordinate place 
in history. The world's thinkers and workers, the 
world's missionaries, scientists, educators, these 
must be crowned with laurels. The genius of in- 
dustry must be exalted. When this is done men 
will aim at being missionaries, educators, explorers, 
scientists, philanthropists, workers. Such celebra- 
tions as this lead to this needed rewriting of the 
world's history, and of the exaltation of character 
and of life and of exploits that make for peace and 
for the triumph of mind and soul in the world. 

Another point I keep before my mind for rec- 
ognition and inspiration. It is this : we are cele- 
brating the overrule of God in human history. 

Columbus is nothing ; God is everything. God 
could have discovered America without Columbus. 
It was discovered independent of Columbus and in 



30G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

another way. While Columbus was struggling 
with his rebellious colony in Hispaniola, Pedro 
Cabral, a citizen of Portugal, with a fleet of thir- 
teen vessels, sailing on his way to Calcutta, was 
blown across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. It was 
because of this fact that Portugal afterward claimed 
Brazil. Portugal virtually owned it even down 
to the days of Dom Pedro, when it became a re- 
public. 

God works in long periods, and this is illustrated 
in the history of the discovery and population of 
America. Yet, while God works in long periods, 
everything is timed to the hour, and each event has 
its place and order. The compass must come 
to make navigation possible. The astrolabe and 
quadrant must come, so that the navigator can 
make out his exact distance from the equator by 
the altitude of the sun. These instruments make 
man perfectly at home upon the sea ; they unchain 
the ocean from the old bondage of timidity and 
fear. Now men may learn that God intended the 
ocean not to be a dividing waste, separating con- 
tinent from continent, but He meant it to be a 
highway between land and land, whitened with the 
sails of a universal commerce. 

After the opening of the highways ot the sea, 
the art of printing must come, and then the art of 
making paper. These give the Bible to the world. 
It is time now for the discovery of America, a new 



COLUMBUS: THE RESULTS OF HIS LIFE. 397 

land for a new and a higher life, and America is 
discovered. But, mark you, while discovered, 
America is not at once populated. The time has 
not come for that. It must be explored first, and 
the world must be taught just what America is. 

A century and a half passes before God lets the 
people in. A century and a half is needed for the 
Bible to work its way in Europe and prepare a 
people for the prepared land. At the right time 
the prepared people come to New England and 
build up institutions there according to the teach- 
ings of the Scriptures. The Atlantic coast is made 
a fountain of liberty and law and righteousness. 
When the Atlantic coast becomes strong enough 
to influence the whole land for God and truth, a 
Western pioneer finds a flake of gold in the Rock- 
ies, and in a single decade a whole nation pours 
out into the great West. But not gold, nor the 
glory of kings, nor the pride of power, made the 
discovery of America worth while. No. The 
tremendous impulse and opportunity which it gave 
to mental activity, and the wonderful loosening of 
shackles which it brought, and the field which it 
furnished for the American Republic — these only 
made the discovery of America worth while. 

I can mention only one point more. It is this: 
we are celebrating the possibilities of the future. 
Whose future? Our future. For it is true, as 
Emerson says, " America stands for opportunity." 



398 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

It stands for opportunity In the development of a 
magnificent patriotism and of magnificent ideals, 

I am glad of one thing, and that is, this is a time 
devoted to the honoring of the American flag. 
The old flag is waved in our pubhc schools and 
it floats from the windows of our homes; it is in 
the breeze everywhere. This week in Chicago it 
will be thrown in the form of pyrotechnics into the 
open heaven at midnight to blaze above the dedi- 
cated buildings of the World's Fair. 

One of the promised attractions of the week in 
Chicago is a fiery simulation of our country's flag 
floating in the air. A vast cloud of smoke will be 
tossed high into the dome to form the blue field ; 
into this forty-four mortars will discharge as many 
bombs, carefully timed to explode simultaneously, 
which will form forty-four stars ; other mortars 
will fire shells at the same time, loaded with 
colored explosives which in bursting will throw 
out long streamers of red, white, and blue to form 
bars. The whole will produce a gigantic Ameri- 
can flag, with colors harmoniously blended. 

Americans, let this be the occasion when you 
shall run up the stars and stripes in your hearts and 
when you shall consecrate yourselves anew to the 
highest patriotism. 



IX. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON A FACTOR IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY. 



999 



XIII. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON A FACTOR IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY.* 

My fellow-citizens, it is a grand thing for a 
nation to have grand men for ancestors ; to have 
a history the opening pages of which are crowded 
with interest, the first chapters of which are filled 
with God and with human heroism, the product 
of man's alliance with God. Such a history will 
send a holy and an inspiring thrill through the 
body politic age after age. Such ancestors will 
stand as eternal sentinels, guarding the liberties of 
the nation and the principles of the nation and the 
faith of the nation. Such men will rebuke and 
commend and lead the nation perpetually. 

You see the bearing of all this. It leads us 
directly to the topic of the evening, which intro- 
duces us to the great ancestor of the American 
Republic, George Washington. Our civil fathers, 

* Delivered in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, at the cele- 
bration of Washington's birthday by the Grand Army of the Re- 
public 

403 



404 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

whom George Washington led, were men fired by 
a world-wide purpose, which came from the heart 
of God. Guided and sustained by this purpose, 
they took possession of this continent for us, and 
they left us as a heritage the embodiment of their 
principles in our vast and honored Republic. They 
planted the seed which grew the national tree under 
which we live. The product of their life is grand, 
but, grand as it is, it is only a prophecy of what 
shall be. We have not yet reached ultimate 
America, nor even typical America. Typical 
America is yet in the future. There are prayers 
of our national fathers still before the throne of 
God awaiting an answer. The prayers of George 
Washington at Valley Forge were broader than 
Valley Forge, and these prayers are still before 
God. God feels their strong pulsations, which 
beat in unison with His own purposes for America, 
and He is keeping them constantly in sight for the 
coming of the right day. When that day comes 
they will be translated from divine decrees into 
human realities. George Washington is not yet 
through with the American Republic, and God 
grant that he never may be. When the Republic 
breaks with the father of our country the doom of 
the Republic will be forever sealed. Let the cele- 
bration of Washington's birthday go forward. It 
is in accordance with the mind of the great Ruler 
of the universe, who Himself crowns every true 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 405 

man, and who issues His decree that the righteous 
shall be held in everlasting remembrance. Let 
North and South be one in honoring the man; 
let music and artillery and pyrotechnics grace his 
memory ; let mature scholarship praise the states- 
manship of the eighteenth century ; let burning 
eloquence depict the glory and advance of the 
nation for which Washington Hved; let the voice 
of prayer reverently rise to God upon this day, and 
commit the nation's future to the God who made 
the nation's past. 

In contributing my part to the celebration of 
to-night, I wish, in the presence of the brave men 
of America who fought for the life of the Republic 
which George Washington gave us, to tell the story 
of George Washington and then evolve from that 
story some lessons of American patriotism. 

Owing to the limit of time, our picture of Wash- 
ington this evening must be the merest charcoal 
sketch — an outline and nothing more. But in this 
outline we wish to see the real Washington and 
not the tf-aditional Washington ; the historical 
Washington and not the idealized Washington ; the 
prose Washington and not the poetic Washington ; 
Washington the man and not Washington the 
myth ; Washington as seen in the clear, open sun- 
light and not Washington as seen in the haze of 
eulogy. We protest against every tendency to 
starch and stiffen and costumize this plain, honest 



406 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

farmer, who was faulty in his grammar and eUip- 
tical in his spelHng. Let Washington be kept 
humanized. For my part, I am accustomed to 
take comfort from what Washington ivas not as 
well as from what he was. 

He owed nothing to birth. The light of no an- 
cestral glory haloed his brow. No bluer blood 
flowed in his veins than that which flowed in the 
veins of ten thousand other Americans. He was 
not a brilliant man, as men who rule and lead in 
the world of letters are brilliant ; he was not pos- 
sessed of brilliant parts, like a diamond which can 
be turned in the sunlight ; his was not so much the 
genius of intellect, although he had enough of that, 
as it was tJie genius of character. I rejoice in this, 
because tJie genius of character is attainable by 
all. The man who lives in right relations with the 
truth and with the right and with God, and who 
deals in noble and honest and brave things, can 
and does build up a true character. True charac- 
ter-building is within the power of every mortal. 

" But Washington was a providential man," you 
say. Yes ; but so may you be a providential man 
if you will. Every man who absolutely yields 
himself up to God and to the call of the hour, and 
who explicitly and implicitly follows the openings 
of Providence, is a providential man in the full 
length and breadth and sweep of his life. And 
he is as necessary a man in his place as George 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 407 

Washington was in his. I do not regret that 
Washington was not a brilHant man. A man of 
character is infinitely better than a man of bril- 
Hancy. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he will 
excel. The majority of brilliant men in history 
remind me of a bolt of lightning. A bolt of light- 
ning is a mighty power. Hurled out of the cloud- 
covered and storm-shaken dome, it sweeps along 
its course in dazzling and flashing grandeur. It 
is a magnificent thing; it holds us enrapt as we 
watch it, but at the same time it fills us with 
fear. We tremble, not knowing what is coming, 
nor how it will use its power, nor where it will 
strike. Brilliant human lives are often like the 
thunderbolt ; they illumine, they dazzle, they 
show mighty power, but they keep the world in 
perpetual fear and anxiety as to what the result of 
their Hving may be. They are liable to be erratic 
and wickedly ambitious; they are liable to throw 
themselves against the right ; nine times out of 
ten we find them to be Napoleonic and not Wash- 
ingtonian. The diff"erence between Napoleon and 
Washington is the difference between the iron heel 
and the helping hafnd, the difference between 
tyranny and freedom, the difference between a 
man living for self and a man living for broad 
humanity. Brilliant men are usually proud men, 
selfish men, tyrannical men. 

History gives us a full record of Washington. 



408 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Its eye was on him from birth to burial. He came 
into life in a plain fashion and lived his boyhood 
days in a plain fashion. His early education was 
something like the education of Abraham Lincoln, 
the only other American who is able to stand life- 
size by his side and grandly hold his own. Neither 
of these men saw the inside of a university. Wash- 
ington went to a low grade of private school, taught 
by the parish sexton. He learned the three R's, 
but he never studied grammar. In his brother's 
house he studied a little geometry. This sums up 
all that the schools did for him. 

If this sums up all that the schools did for him, 
how are his wonderful state papers to be accounted 
for? They are models. His farewell address, 
like Lincoln's Gettysburg address, is nothing short 
of a national classic. I account for the form and 
power of his state papers just as I account for his 
wonderful career: I see here the result of great 
goodness. He wrote out of himself. His face was 
everywhere and always toward the light, so not a 
vocable rang false in his state papers. He spoke 
and wrote electly and directly, because he spoke 
and wrote from a pure character. He felt through 
and through his entire consciousness the beauty of 
simplicity. He did not know how electly he did 
speak and write. Such is always the case with 
goodness. He had something true and important 
to say, and this, too, was a reason why he struck a 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 409 

high level in Hterature. There is a relation be- 
tween ethics and esthetics. Washington's thoughts 
were full of ethics, hence Washington's words were 
models of esthetics. 

Deprived of school privileges, he trained him- 
self out of school. As we see him train himself 
out of school, we see the man in the boy. As a 
boy he drilled himself in self-control, and in regu- 
larity of work, and in the art of politeness, and in 
respect for conscience, and in the fear of God. As 
a boy he was soulful and thoughtful and devout; 
he was of a meditative spirit. As a boy he studied 
the art of courteous, agreeable intercourse ; he laid 
down rules to guide him in the avoidance of all 
that would ofTend refined taste, and in the culture 
of that which was pleasing in manner and in habit. 
Manuscripts found in his own handwriting show 
this. The majority of boys and men do not try 
to please or be pleasing, and they succeed : they 
are not pleasing. By ill manners they throw away 
half the power of their life. Decorum and polite- 
ness are greater forces in society than we imagine. 
They are the evidence of self-respect, and the man 
only who respects himself is respected by his 
fellows. 

Here are some of the rules which he wrote out 
for himself at the age of thirteen : 

" Never violate the laws of good society. Avoid 
everything that offends or annoys. 



410 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

" Endeavor to keep alive in your bosom that 
little divine spark called conscience. 

" When you speak of God or His attributes, 
speak seriously and in reverence." 

These rules have come down to us in the hand- 
writing of the boy Washington. Living under 
these rules I call putting one's self underthe highest 
type of religion. 

At the age of seventeen Washington earned his 
livelihood as a surveyor of public lands. He fol- 
lowed this occupation for three years. This was 
a wholesome discipline : it made him physically, 
and when, at the end of three years, he stood forth 
six feet two inches, he was broad-shouldered and 
full-chested, every inch of him a man ; it identi- 
fied him with the least artificial of human pursuits ; 
it shielded him also from the perversion of his 
moral energies; it made him practical; it inured 
him to habits of keen local study ; it made him 
familiar with fatigue and exposure ; it taught him 
to accommodate himself to limited fare and to 
camp Hfe ; it made a soldier out of him. 

At the age of nineteen he took a commission 
from the colony of Virginia and entered into the 
French and Indian wars. After this he went with 
his brother to the West Indies ; while there his 
brother died, leaving him his estate. It was in 
this way that he came into the possession of Mount 
Vernon. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 411 

At the age of twenty-seven Washington married 
Mrs. Martha Custis, a widow with two children ; 
she was noted for two things, wealth and beauty. 
No one could ever say that he married her for 
money, but her money came in good place during 
the Revolutionary times and enabled him the bet- 
ter to serve his country. 

At the age of forty-two he became a member 
of the first general Congress of the colonies, and 
at the age of forty-four he was, through the in- 
fluence of John Adams, selected as commander- 
in-chief of the American forces. He took com- 
mand of the army under the old elm-tree which 
still grows on the common of Cambridge, Mass. 
America required as a leader a man reared under 
her own eye, who combined with distinguished 
talents a character above suspicion, and George 
Washington was that man. 

He remained at the head of the army for seven 
long years, during which time his foot neverstepped 
across the threshold of his home. The history of 
these seven years is familiar to you all ; they were 
full of intense interest, from the raising of the siege 
of Boston by building batteries on Dorchester 
Heights, to the surrender of the British army at 
Yorktown. 

Two battles at least during this period showed 
great military genius and would have been worthy 
of Napoleon — the battles of Trenton and German- 



412 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

town. Washington showed a military genius in 
these, just as afterward, in reading the future of 
America and in creating our foreign policy, he 
showed a genius of statesmanship. Washington 
crossing the Delaware on a stormy night in mid- 
winter, when the river was running high and full 
of ice, was like Napoleon crossing the Alps. For 
his services during the Revolutionary War he took 
no remuneration whatever ; that showed where his 
heart was and for what he was fighting. He was 
ambitious not for self, but for country. He fought 
not for glory, but for a cause. 

His services in this war illustrate his character 
and set forth his endowments. While he was 
constantly active and was full of untiring persever- 
ance, he was also noted for his large passive virtues. 
These were the virtues which won the day. He 
was not able to meet the foe on an open field ; he 
had not the army with which to do that ; his only 
hope was to weary the British by long retreats, 
making now and then a daring attack and winning 
a brilliant victory, to revive his troops and his 
country and to keep the love of the cause of liberty 
alive. Only a man largely endowed with the pas- 
sive virtues could have endured the gibes of foes 
and the suspicions of allies and the charge of in- 
competency by friends. We want to make more 
of the passive virtues than we do. 

The war over, was Washington's work through ? 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 413 

No; it was only half through. Many more years 
of service were required from him upon the part 
of his country. The war over, the States free, a 
new era opened before America. God had brought 
the States through the great struggle, but danger 
was not over for them. War had united them, 
but, now that the war was over, they were in 
danger of falling apart and of entering into battle 
with one another. 

The most perilous years in the history of our 
nation were the four years after the Revolution. 
This period was what John Fiske has called the 
"critical era." Each State began to look out for 
itself and to become jealous of every other State. 
The Articles of Confederation were too indefinite 
and too feeble. The Continental Congress, ruling 
under these, had but limited authority. A heavy 
debt rested upon the nation, and the soldiers who 
had won the freedom of the nation were compelled 
to go unpaid. It is impossible to magnify the ills 
of this period ; yet the average American rests 
under the delusion that when the Revolutionary 
War was over our fathers had a political millen- 
nium. There was great financial distress. There 
was civil war in North Carolina and there was re- 
volt in Pennsylvania. The times demanded efforts 
for a more perfect and permanent union, and for 
better articles of confederation, and for a wider 
central government. This demand originated the 



414 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

convention which framed the Constitution. Of 
this convention George Washington was the chair- 
man and head. The Constitution framed and 
adopted, he was elected the first President, with 
John Adams Vice-President. It was not his wish 
to be President; the office sought him, he did not 
seek the office. Every office which he held dur- 
ing his long public service was forced upon him ; 
he took and filled public positions only from a 
sense of duty and only to serve a cause. Let our 
politicians and statesmen take note of this fact. It 
is delightful to see how Washingtonian the men of 
our day are, especially the men in whose bonnets 
the presidential bee is buzzing. How much coax- 
ing they require! How extremely modest they 
are ! Not a single man is doing a single thing to 
get the nomination. They are so completely hidden 
behind their modest blushes that they can be dis- 
covered only by that new-found element of light, 
the X ray, which has such a penetrating power 
that it can photograph even our bones. 

By the way, if you are searching for a candidate 
for the Presidency, what is the matter with Gover- 
nor Morton? or what is the matter with Speaker 
Reed? or what is the matter with the major? 
Major who? Why, Major McKinley. 

Gentlemen, the most effective way to kill your 
candidate is to hurrah for him ahead of time. We 
are six months away from nomination day, so now 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 415 

is the time to hurrah for the men you don't want. 
If there is a candidate you are afraid of and would 
hke to kill, present his name to the public at once 
and at once begin to hurrah for him. This is what 
some men in our State are charged with doing to- 
day. If that charge be true, if any man or any 
set of men are trifling with our venerable governor, 
or are making game of him, or are insincere in 
asking him for his name, or are using him for the 
purpose of ignobly trading him by and by, they 
ought, to use a military figure, to be immediately 
court-martialed and in disgrace be drummed out 
of the political camp. 

But I must return from these pleasantries to our 
subject. The day of Washington's inauguration 
was a great day ; he himself felt it to be such ; for 
if the gigantic enterprise upon which the Republic 
enters prove a failure, " government of the people, 
and by the people; and for the people " will be set 
back centuries, and the tyrannies of the Old World, 
with their monarchical ideas, will receive a new 
lease of life. But if the enterprise prove successful, 
the cause of civil freedom will bound up in every 
land, and the whole world will begin its march 
toward constitutional liberty. 

The day when it dawned found the whole nation, 
so far as possible, assembled at New York. Mul- 
titudes with thrilling hearts witnessed the admin- 
istration of the oath of office; and when George 



416 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Washington, with great fervor, said, " I swear, so 
help me God," the chancellor who administered 
the oath turned round to the living throngs and 
cried with a loud voice, " Long live George Wash- 
ington, the President of tJie United States of Amer- 
ica! " That shout the people echoed all through 
the city and all through the Republic, and then a 
thousand chimes pealed forth in musical notes of 
joy, and a thousand guns answered with their voice 
of hearty salute. 

Having served his country for eight years, the 
limit of presidential rule for any man, Washington 
retired to the privacy of his home at Mount Ver- 
non and lived in quietness until death called him 
to take up his march to the throne of God. When 
he died all America mourned him, and the nations 
abroad joined America in the mourning. The flags 
of France were craped, and even the flags of Great 
Britain floated at half-mast ; for> as Goldwin Smith 
says, " England felt that he had only fought against 
the government of George III., and not against 
England." 

Washington is now before us, and we see him 
as he is and as he reveals himself in his life-work. 
He impresses us as a man whose manhood is pure 
and simple ; he is self-possessed ; he is temperate ; 
he is methodical ; he has the power of carrying 
with him all details ; he is prompt, filling each day 
with the duties of the day ; he is a man of deeds 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 417 

more than of words ; he gives us a life by which 
to know him — a hfe full to overflowing with works, 
a life full of pathetic gravity and seriousness, which 
comes from a sense of duty, and from seeing and 
dealing with eternal realities, and from carrying 
the burdens of the human race. His life is a con- 
tinued exhibit of unselfishness ; it is an eloquent 
and an immortal oration on hberty. To repeat a 
phrase I have already used, his ivas preeminently 
the genius of cJiaracter. It is his character that sets 
up his statue in our public parks and that hangs 
his picture in our legislative halls. It is his char- 
acter that holds for him the attachment of a con- 
tinent and the personal loyalty of the whole Anglo- 
Saxon race. It is his character that fires the guns 
and pulls the bell-ropes and inspires the orations. 
It is his character that makes his grave at Mount 
Vernon a mightier power than the presence of any 
living statesman. The genius of character! That 
is the greatest known power in the universe. 

The man who admires the genius of intellect 
stands by me and asks. Do you make genius of 
character outrank genius of intellect? I reply, I 
do. Unless a man have love and devotion and 
self-sacrifice and self-control and honesty and 
truthfulness and manliness, he is lacking in the 
very pith and beauty of manhood ; he is not a great 
man, no matter what else he may have. He is 
not a great being. He may have written a match- 



418 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

less poem, he may have arranged the marv^elous 
plots of a striking play ; his meters may run like 
the music of the flowing brooks, and his metaphors 
may shine like the green fields and the blue seas 
and the golden clouds from which they are drawn ; 
the personages in his dramas may be grand men 
doing grand things. Pointing to these, the admirer 
of the genius of intellect asks me with confidence, 
And is not this glory enough for the man ? Has 
he not reached the acme of greatness? I answer, 
No ; this is not glory enough for the man ; he has 
not reached the acme of greatness. There are 
great heights beyond him still. He must himself 
be the best character he can represent; he must 
himself enact in real life the highest qualities he 
can paint; he must do, and love to do, the noblest 
deeds he can abstractly conceive and beautifully 
describe. His intellect must not overtop his char- 
acter nor his lips outboast the achievements of his 
hands. The genius of character/ There is no 
power like that. That was the power possessed 
by George Washington. It was that which gave 
him his clear and unerring insight into things; it 
was that which crowned him and the cause which 
he espoused with success ; it was that which carried 
the blessing of almighty God with it. We might 
truthfully describe this man, whose power was the 
genius of character, as Tennyson describes one of 
his heroes; he was 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 419 

** Rich in saving common sense, 
And as the greatest only are — 
In his simplicity sublime; 
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour. 
Nor paltered with eternal God for power ; 
Whose life was work, whose language rife 
With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 
Who never spake against a foe. 
Let his great example stand 
Colossal, seen in every land, 
Till in all lands, and through all human story. 
The path of duty be the way to glory." 

Such is our Washington. To-day we stand in 
his presence and feel his power. We do this as 
part of our education. It is one of the most hope- 
ful of our human attributes that we have the ca- 
pacity to be touched and thrilled and inspired by 
those who are above us. It is the germ and 
promise of progress. We are educated by our 
admirations ; nothing, perhaps, educates us more. 
I rejoice that this is so, because I remember that 
Washington calls out the admiration of all America. 
He educates the American citizen ; he refines him ; 
he elevates him. Do you not hear his voice ? Do 
you not see the civic precepts shining out of his 
life in letters of gold ? Let me read you some of 
these and in this way give you the lessons which, 
at the beginning of my address, I promised to 
evolve from his life. 

I hear the father of his country uttering three 
precepts to-night, all of which are practical and are 



420 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 

necessary for the making of ultimate America. 
The first of these is this : 

I. Americans^ give your country a true manhood. 

This, and this alone, is true patriotism. This 
alone will make our country strong. As a chain 
is no stronger than its individual links, so the 
character of the nation is no higher than the char- 
acter of its separate citizens. There is no getting 
away from the individual man ; he must be made 
right if the world is to be made right. There is 
only one effective process of regenerating society, 
and that is to regenerate the atoms of society. It 
is only the citizen who has a true manliood who 
can do manly things and build into our civil insti- 
tutions manly virtues. The night cannot emit the 
light; it takes the day to do that. The citizen is 
never better than the man ; your patriotism cannot 
rise higher than your morals. Hence the vital 
question is. What are yon ? Are you a man of 
truth, a sober man, an honest man, a generous 
man, a loyal man, a man of God? Show me a 
nation of such men, and I will show you a mag- 
nificent nation, a nation that is a model of civil and 
religious liberty, a nation with grand popular in- 
stitutions, a nation full of commercial prosperity, 
a progressive nation, a nation whose laws are 
righteous and whose career is one of exaltation. 

I am in search of good men for our nation, be- 
cause, in this latter and better age, which Wash- 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 421 

ington has inaugurated, goodness is greatness. 
The great man of the future will be the good man 
of the future. I know that goodness has not always 
been considered the equivalent of greatness, but 
Washington by his great American life has changed 
our estimate. It was not so considered when the 
race was young, but it is so considered now ; for 
the human race has reached its maturity. 

As we review the history of the world, we see 
it dividing itself into three stages : in the first stage 
power is magnified ; force is deified ; the great man 
is the strong man. In this era Nimrod is the hero 
after the world's heart. Strength receives the 
homage of the many. In the second stage power 
is pushed a step or two back, and intellect comes 
to the front ; the great man is the intellectual man. 
In this era Homer is the favorite idol before whom 
the populace delight to bow. Genius receives the 
homage of men. Christianity has inaugurated the 
third stage. In this era the world is pointed not 
to Nimrod, not to Homer, but to Christ, who goes 
about doing good. Ever after this it is not power, 
it is not genius, but it is goodness. The great man 
of the future will be the good man of the future. 

What seems strange, these three stages of the 
world's history which I have just mentioned are 
paralleled in the individual experience of man as 
he admires the forces operating in the world. 
What causes the heart of the boy to respond in 



422 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

admiration ? David slaying Goliath — pozver. Cjesar 
leading the Tenth Legion — potver. Napoleon at 
the head of the Old Guard — poivcr. Let the boy- 
pass into young manhood ; what causes his heart 
to respond in admiration as a young man ? Shake- 
speare creating his wonderful characters — genius. 
Macaulay writing his history — genius. Goethe 
throwing off the marvelous products of his pen — 
genius. Let the young man reach his full maturity 
and become able to sift and analyze and judge 
things by the most approved standards ; what calls 
out admiration from the heart of the mature man? 
John Howard at work among the reeking prisons 
— goodness. Livingstone in the heart of tiie Dark 
Continent, struggling for the elevation of Africa — 
goodness. Abraham Lincoln calling into existence 
the Grand Army of the Republic and writing the 
Emancipation Proclamation — goodness. Goodness 
is greatness. The great man of the future will be 
the good man of the future. Above all things, 
then, let the coming patriot give his country a man- 
hood wiiich shall be the incarnation of goodness. 

My fellow-citizens, our country first of all wants 
men — good men ; national men versus local men ; 
apocalyptic, men, men of prevision, seeing a sub- 
lime future for the Republic ; men of progress, men 
who are not afraid to improve upon their ancestors; 
men of powerful pens; men of executive ability; 
men who are genuine through and through ; men 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 423 

like Washington, who not only had the genius of 
intellect and the genius of war and the genius of 
statesmanship, but who had preeminently, above 
all these, tJie genius of character. 

" God give us men! A time like this demands 

Clean minds, pure hearts, true faith, and ready hands. 

Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men whom desire for office does not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 

Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ; 

Tall men ; sun-crowned men ; men who live above the fog 

In public duty and in private thinking; 

Men who can stand before a demagogue 

And denounce his treacherous flatteries without winking. 

For while base tricksters, with their worn-out creeds. 

Their large professions, and their little deeds, 

Wrangle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, 

Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps." 

The second Washingtonian precept which I wish 
to present is this : 

2. Be intense Americans. 

It was to found an American commonwealth that 
Washington gave his life It was for American 
ideas that he fought. When his soldiers wanted 
to crown him as a king, he refused, because he 
believed that every man in the Republic was a 
king. A free manhood, carrying in it the necessity 
of the consent of the governed, free thought, free 
speech, free schools, with the American flag in them 
for our boys and girls to salute, a free ballot, a free 



424 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

press — all these are American ideas ; and Washing- 
tonism, which is the highest type of Americanism, 
consists in standing for the defense of these. 

I am not ashamed to stand here and advocate 
intense Americanism, for there is nothing grander 
under the sky. A fine Americanism is the equa- 
tion of the highest civilization, of the broadest 
humanity, of the purest and simplest religion, of 
the largest liberty, of the grandest personal and 
political principles, and of magnificent manhood and 
a holy womanhood. 

Intense Americanism requires us, above all things, 
to look after the integrity and the wholeness of our 
nation. We must see to it that there is no division 
of loyalty upon the part of its citizens. We have 
opened the gates of our nation to all the world and 
have dispensed the right of franchise freely; we 
must see to it that all who accept our gift under- 
stand what they are doing and give to us in return 
what we require by the oath of naturalization. 
Guarding the oath of naturalization is 
FUNDAMENTAL. Guarding it means guarding our 
American principles and our American institutions ; 
for if we keep out of citizenship the unworthy, and 
let into citizenship only those who positively love 
our principles and institutions, we conserve these. 
Let us tell all foreigners the moment they step 
upon our shores that we mean that this Republic 
shall be practically and ultimately American. The 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 425 

American Republic exists for the purpose of be- 
coming supreme. In Europe there is Ireland for 
the Irish who will not consent to become recon- 
structed, and Italy for the Italians of the same type, 
and Rome for Romans, and Germany for unwork- 
able Germans, and France for fussy Frenchmen; 
but on this continent, from Plymouth Rock in the 
East to the Golden Gate in the West, from the 
Alaskan snows in the North to the tropical waters 
of the Gulf of Mexico in the South, there is room 
only for Americans. Now it is not illiberal in us 
to push Americanism to the front. No; for in 
Americanism there is room enough and breadth 
enough for all the races which are willing to unify 
with us. America exists for the world, and it is 
axiomatic that America can serve the world only 
as it is American. Americanism is the broadest 
kind of humanitarianism and the widest type of 
cosmopolitanism. 

When our Republic was organized and our in- 
stitutions were introduced and our future was out- 
lined, it occurred to American patriots that it would 
be a generous thing to invite others to the enjoy- 
ments of civil wealth. So our RepubHc unfurled its 
flag of welcome and waved an invitation to the na- 
tions far and near; it opened its door of citizenship 
to the wide world. But were there no conditions 
of citizenship? Were not people of all nations 
invited for a special object ? Oh yes ; they were 



426 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC* 

invited for this object, viz., to build up the institu- 
tions which our fathers had founded and for which 
they had shed their blood. They were invited to 
work out Americanism. It was the distinct under- 
standing that each one who accepted the invitation 
accepted also the object of the invitation. Any- 
thing else would have been suicide upon the part 
of our Republic. A strict oath of naturalization 
was built up at the door of entrance ; by that oath 
every man who became an American citizen was 
required to renounce forever and entirely all alle- 
giance to every other civil power. 

Now all this is easily understood. No honest 
man dare take that oath with a mental reservation ; 
if any -man dare, he steals his citizenship and no 
more owns it than the thief who plucks your watch 
from your pocket owns your watch. How do you 
treat such a thief? You take the watch from him 
and you legally and lawfully do something more. 

When a man is born into our Republic by 
naturalization, our institutions receive a new de- 
fender and the nation an additional element of 
strength. The oath of naturalization says to every 
man seeking citizenship, You must subordinate 
everything to America. There is no class here ; 
there is no union of church and state here. If your 
creed specify that such a union should exist, you 
must give up that creed. There is nothing here 
but Americanism. A nd you swear that there shall 



GEORGE WASHINGTON, 427 

be nothing here hit Americanism. The oath of 
naturaHzation is an oath of purgation whereby all 
foreign allegiance is renounced. The man who 
takes it in its spirit is born into a new civil life. 
Acting in loyalty to that oath, let us see to it that 
we make public sentiment so true and so American 
that every foreign thing, man, school, church, shall 
be completely absorbed and assimilated by republi- 
can principles and purposes, or else shall be openly 
and nnequivocally rejected as mi-American^ and 
treated as akin to treason. 

There is only one legal way of transporting the 
waters of the Danube and the Rhine and the Seine 
and the Thames and the Tiber, that they may flow 
by right and peaceably in the channels of the Hud- 
son and the Charles and the Connecticut and the 
Merrimac and the Columbia and the Mississippi. 
That way is by evaporation and condensation. The 
evaporation takes place in Europe; the condensa- 
tion takes place here in the American atmosphere. 
Let us see to it that the process which takes place 
in our American sky-dome is so complete that each 
drop of water distilled shall be so American that 
there shall not be in it the least taint or tinge 
of Danube, Rhine, Seine, Thames, or Tiber. On 
American soil race should merge into race, as crys- 
tal water merges into crystal water, to fllow on as 
a sparkling river of life. Let there be one country 
for all, one standard of loyalty for all, one system 



428 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of free State non-sectarian public schools for all, 
one sacred ballot-box for all, one type of citizen- 
ship for all, one Declaration of Independence for 
all, one national language for all, one flag, Old 
Glory, the stars and stripes, for all, and one sover- 
eign for all, and that the sovereign will of the 
people, exercised according to the spirit and pur- 
pose of the national Constitution. 

The last Washingtonian precept which I stop to 
present is this : 

3. Patriots, see that A inerica holds her leadership 
among the peoples and nations of the earth. 

This is a precept which I feel I can confidently 
urge upon the men of the Grand Army of the 
Republic, the successors of George Washington in 
the military life of the nation. No class of men 
are more willing to see that America leads than 
you are. There are no men who have done more 
for their country than you have. You purchased 
the country with a second and a great price, and 
you own it as no other class of American citizens 
own it. Your voice on behalf of the right will be 
heard when no other voice can prevail. There is 
no plea like the plea of the empty sleeve and the 
bullet-scarred body of the veteran soldier. 

My fellow-citizens, you won the victories of war; 
your country now calls upon you to win the greater 
victories of peace. There remaineth yet much to 
be done ; we are still in our formative period. The 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 429 

clothes of the boy will not answer for the clothes 
of the man. Growth brings new problems and 
new battles for ideas and principles. We need men 
who will fight for honest money, and who will fight 
for a common-sense measure of raising a sufficient 
revenue wherewith to run the government. We 
talk of the old colonial and Revolutionary times as 
times that were big. Times are always big to 
earnest men. Our times are big to us if we are 
earnest; they are crowded with problems which 
can be solved only by men like Washington and 
his compeers. There is the money problem and 
the labor problem and the emigration problem 
and the race problem and the educational prob- 
lem and the problem of our foreign policy; and 
these must all be met and solved, because our 
solution of these will touch and influence for good 
or for evil every nation on the earth. 

Then there is the great problem of our relations 
to broad humanity. The oppressed in all the na- 
tions of the globe are looking toward America for 
light and for ruling principles and for certain gui- 
dance and for an uplifting hand. We have a mission 
to all the nations of the world as well as a mission 
to our citizens at home. Our national experience 
gives us that mission, our progress gives us that 
mission, and our holy ambition to reach the highest 
civilization gives us that mission. It is our mission 
to lead humanity on all continents, and it is our 



430 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

mission to lead just because civilly we are ahead 
of humanity. 

My task is finished. This is our ideal. When 
our patriotism matches our ideal, then, with radiant 
faces, we can turn to our beloved native land and 
address it in the well-known words of our honored 
poet: 

"Sail on, O ship of state! 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 

Humanity, with all its fears. 

With all its hopes of future years. 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 

" We know what masters laid thy keel, 
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 

Who made each mast and sail and rope, j 

What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 

" Fear not each sudden sound and shock: 
'Tis but the wave, and not the rock ; 
'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 
And not a rent made by the gale! 

" In spite of rock and tempest roar. 
In spite of false lights on the shore, 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
Our faith triumphant over fears, 

Are all with thee — ARE ALL WITH THEE!" 



XIV. 
THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 



431' 



XIV. 

THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC* 

I HAVE in my library a volume bearing this 
title : " Historical and Patriotic Addresses, Cen- 
tennial and Quadrennial." The American flag 
forms its frontispiece and American history con- 
stitutes the contents of its pages. The book has 
over one thousand pages. It was issued last year 
under the editorship of P'rederick Saunders, libra- 
rian of the Astor Library. It is the intention of 
the book to give the steps of American progress 
and set forth the elements of our Republic's 
strength. In the book are national odes by 
Whittier and Holmes, and orations by Webster 
and Adams and Evarts and Curtis and Depew and 
Winthrop and kindred spirits, and patriotic sermons 
by loyal divines, closing with a sermon delivered 
in this pulpit. When I took up this book and turned 
its pages, this was the one thing which I noticed : 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- 
lyn, on Home Mission Sabbath. 

435 



430 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

looking through the book was like looking over an 
American landscape or over an American city ; the 
chief thing which caught the eye was the Christian 
church. In every ode and oration and sermon of 
the book rises the tapering church spire, tipped with 
a glittering cross or with a blazing star. Here is a 
book composed of the deepest thoughts and obser- 
vations of America's foremost thinkers, — poets, jur- 
ists, statesmen, merchants, ministers, — and it rep- 
resents all classes of Americans as saying. The 
Christian church has been one of the most potent 
factors in the construction of the American Repub- 
lic and one of the greatest bulwarks of its magnifi- 
cent principles and institutions. 

That book set me thinking. It gave me also my 
topic for this morning. It started such questions 
with me as these : Is its teaching true ? Ought the 
church spire to shoot up in every patriotic ode and 
oration and sermon? If the Christian church be 
the national power which these patriotic men rep- 
resent it to be, what constitutes its power? How 
does the church serve the Republic ? If the teach- 
ing of this book be true, then is it not also true 
that in the power of the church we have one of the 
grandest arguments in favor of pushing the great 
work of home missions in our land ? The ultima- 
tum, the objective point, of every American home 
missionary is to plant a Christian church on the 
frontier of the Republic, and to make it an elevat- 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 437 

ing, saving, spiritualizing, patriotic power in the 
wild life which men live on the outposts of our 
civilization. 

I affirm that the teaching of this book concern- 
ing the Christian church is true. The church spire 
is in every American landscape and in every 
American city, just as it ii in every ode and ora- 
tion and sermon of this historic volume. Without 
the large prevalence of the church spire jutting 
from its pages the book would be untrue to Amer- 
ican history. 

The very first house of any importance which 
our Pilgrim fathers built on this continent was the 
house of God. To use the poet's phrase, they 
made New England the land of " templed hills." 

" I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills." 

Like the Jews of old, they looked upon church- 
building as an unmistakable proof of a love of 
country. " He loveth our nation, and he hath built 
us a synagogue" (Luke vii. 5). The synagogue 
was the one democratic institution of Judea, the 
one institution in the land wholly free from any 
touch of priest, an institution " of the people and 
for the people and by the people." 

The Mayflower, which brought our Pilgrim 
fathers to Plymouth Rock, was simply the old 
church of Scrooby Manor afloat and heading its 



438 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

way to a great future. And Plymouth Rock, 
where the prow of the Mayflozver touched and 
where the Scrooby church landed, was simply a 
fragment of the Alps, broken off at Geneva, the 
home of John Calvin. Plymouth Rock stands in 
history as the symbol of Calvinism. The covenant 
of the Mayfloivcr, which every American should 
write in his memory, shows all this. It shows the 
play of religion in the origin of American national 
life. Before the Pilgrim fathers set foot on Amer- 
ican soil they took America for God and the 
Christian religion, and entered into a religious 
compact with one another. This is the way that 
covenant opens : 

" In the name of God, amen. We whose 
names are underwritten, having undertaken for 
the glory of God and the advancement of the 
Christian faith, do solemnly and mutually, in the 
presence of God and of one another, covenant and 
combine ourselves together into a civic body 
politic." 

Do we wonder that, in beginning to construct 
our nation in accordance with this Mayjioivcr 
compact, the first building of note which the Pil- 
grim fathers constructed was a Christian church? 
There was no other way of beginning for them, 
and as there was no other way of beginning for 
them, there is no other way of continuing for us. 
In taking possession of new territory we must run 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 439 

up the church, and we must run it up in the very 
beginning. The Christian church must be there 
in the new territory to help formulate the charac- 
ter of its institutions, and to breathe the soul of 
Christ into its gathering society, and to incarnate 
God and conscience in all its history and in all its 
progress. That is the way it was in the begin- 
ning. That is the way Plymouth Rock was taken 
possession of. It is good to keep near to the Plym- 
outh Rock type of life. Take Plymouth Rock 
out of the Republic, and the Republic will fall to 
pieces in the very first storm upon the sands of 
infidelity. 

So imbedded in the life of our early civic fathers 
was the Christian church that we cannot think of 
them apart from the Christian church. The church 
was the real morning of the state with them. They 
saw to it that every infant settlement had its 
sanctuary, until ten thousand spires pointed upward 
to the Source of their national prosperity. With 
them this was the method of their political build- 
ing: the people made the laws, and the churches 
made the people. Their churches were local 
democracies, and of each one this was the motto : 
" One is your Master, and all ye are brethren." 
Their churches were the incarnation of federalism 
and so prophecies of the coming American Union. 
They built into New England general intelligence, 
reverence for law, and faith in God. These were 



440 J/.1A'£MS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the triple foundations which they put underneath 
the young Republic. When, in after ages, the sons 
of New-Englanders moved out of New England 
and sought the West in the conquest of new terri- 
tory, they belted this whole continent with a zone 
of New-Englandism and built this triple founda- 
tion under our whole political fabric. Into the 
great West they carried with them their churches, 
and these continued what they were in the begin- 
ning, centers of political intelligence and of patri- 
otic devotion and of hope for the future. The 
holy and everlasting principles taught in the 
churches wove new stars and stripes to float over 
new homes, and added new State luminaries to 
the galaxy which dotted the blue in our national 
banner. Some one has said, " Education and re- 
ligion are at home wherever our flag shakes out its 
folds," and this is true; but there is a truth prior 
to this and greater than this, and that truth is, the 
stars and stripes are at home wherever Christian 
education and the Christian religion pioneer and 
take the land and fill it with churches. 

I am endeavoring to-day to construct an argu- 
ment for the establishment of Christian churches 
in the American Republic for the Republic's good. 
But in doing so allow me to define the type of a 
church the multiplication of which I ask. I would 
not multiply all religious entities which call them- 
selves churches. We have too many of certain 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 441 

types of church already. I do not argue for a 
church with a hierarchy; such a church is too far 
away from the people. It is too dogmatic; it 
carries too much human authority; it savors too 
much of aristocracy. I beheve that the authority 
of the truth is the only authority which belongs 
to any church. I do not believe that the church 
should have thumbscrews or racks or dungeons or 
swords or bayonets or muskets or cannons of any 
kind. There is something better than a military 
religion and something more effective than a pohce 
Christianity. There have been churches whose 
sermons have had back of them the sword and 
whose prayers have had behind them the musket, 
but these churches have had their day. There is 
room in our Republic only for churches whose in- 
fluence comes from their goodness, morahty, jus- 
tice, charity, reasonableness, weight of argument, 
and amount of truth. The argument which has to 
be supported by any kind of human authority is 
no argument at all. Every true argument is its 
own authority. A prayer which must have a can- 
non behind it had better never be offered. A truth 
which has not force enough in itself to push itself 
and gain for itself acceptance is truth which had 
better sink out of sight and be allowed so to sink. 
A church which demands or claims anything more 
than the simple authority of the truth is a church 
in which Hberty is crucified, and of course it is not 



442 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

expected that I should argue for churches in which 
hberty is crucified. Such churches are the enemies 
of our Repubhc. I argue for churches of an alto- 
gether different spirit. I argue for churches which 
teach equality, which are large-thoughted, which 
broaden a man, which know no class distinction 
among men, which treat capitalist and wage-earner 
alike, which preach the same law to all, which hold 
up a lofty ideal on all lines of life, which teach that 
nothing is politically right which is morally wrong ; 
churches which believe in God and assert God's 
truth, which believe that God's opinions ought 
to be our opinions ; churches whose theology is 
axiomatic and which push self-evident truths; 
churches which eschew speculation and unwork- 
able hypotheses, and put their strength into the 
affirmation of essentials, which ask no more ques- 
tions than they can answer; churches which strike 
at all things that debauch public sentiment, which 
touch the entire life of the community, which 
never discuss great and living issues in a whisper, 
but openly ; churches which talk right out against 
all evil, which believe that the moral law should 
throttle everything unjust, which believe in man 
at his climax and which will not rest until he 
reaches his climax ; churches which will not only 
allow men to think for themselves, but which will 
teach them to think for themselves ; churches 
which are practical and which stand for accredited 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 443 

and applied Christianity ; churches which refuse 
to be controlled by gold, submitting only to the 
rule of principle ; churches which are up to God in 
their aims and plans, and not behind God ; churches 
which believe in real Christians and not in nominal 
Christians, which believe in men and women with 
the kingdom of heaven built into them ; churches 
which are pillars of fire in dark places, which 
humiliate men before their own consciences when 
they do that which is mean and low and vile ; 
churches which preach a full salvation through 
Jesus Christ, which guide the thought of the com- 
munity, hold the balances of judgment, inspire the 
motives of the heart, and in God's name give de- 
cision to the will of the multitude ; churches which, 
under God, lead in truth and in duty. Such are the 
churches larguefor.for such churches will build into 
the American Republic the elements of perpetuity. 
Have such been the churches of the past which 
have led the American Republic? Not wholly, 
but in a measure — in a large measure. While I 
say in a large measure I make no effort to hide 
facts. I do not screen the churches. I admit that 
in many regards they have been unworthy and 
have deserved the rebukes and the philippics ad- 
ministered to them. For example, I remember 
their guilty silence when negro men and women 
and negro boys and girls were sold at ten dollars 
and twenty dollars and thirty dollars a pound, and 



444 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

when African slavery, under the reign of a just 
God, was forging the thunderbolts of war to smite 
the Republic. I remember when such men as 
Wendell Phillips and such women as Lydia Maria 
Childs refused to sit down at the communion- 
table of the churches of Boston, because the 
churches refused to throw themselves on the side 
of the oppressed. These lovers of liberty met to- 
gether by themselves and observed the Lord's 
Supper in their quiet upper room ; and in this they 
were right. Churches do not exist for a contemp- 
tible silence, or for a detestable neutrality, or for 
a masterly inactivity, when there is wrong in the 
air and when it is the duty of the hour to utter the 
protest of almighty God against a debasing in- 
iquity. I admit the delinquency of the Christian 
churches of America in the days of slavery, but 
this also I must claim for the churches: by and by, 
under the leading of God, they finally came up to 
the performance of their duty, and when the great 
crisis was reached they were loyal to the cause of 
liberty. Let justice be done all around. When 
the time came to sustain the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation and make its principles a part of our 
federal Constitution, it was the vote of the Chris- 
tian churches that carried the day. When that 
crisis came, if the churches had not done their 
duty African slavery would have remained the 
curse of the American Republic to this day. 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 415 

I have pictured the character of the churches 
for which I argue to-day and whose multipHcation 
I seek. Give me such churches and you give me 
so many fountains of national Hfe for the RepubHc 
— fountains which will send crystal tides of purity 
and vitality through every artery and vein of our 
national and sectional government to cleanse and 
sweeten and heal and vitalize our government. 

I wish to say just here that very few of us have 
any adequate conception of the power of a pure 
and holy and loyal Christian church. It is the 
parallel of irresistible might. It can carry any 
good cause to triumph in this land when it unitedly 
and fully asserts itself and when it marches to the 
music of old " Coronation." We underestimate 
it, because when we think of the church we think 
simply of the pulpit and make that stand for the 
church. The pulpit is not the church ; the church 
is far more than that. The church includes in 
itself all the agencies which it creates and supports 
and mans. The religious press, the religious plat- 
form, Young Men's Christian Associations, Chris- 
tian Endeavor Societies, Sabbath-schools, Chris- 
tian colleges and seminaries, the vast missionary 
societies, the consecrated gold and silver in the 
bank vaults of Christians, the millions of devoted 
men and women who keep step to the purposes 
of heaven, and the millions who are in its grand 
membership and who form the hosts of God's 



UG MAKERS GF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

elect — these are the church, and not merely the 
pulpit with its single voice here and there proclaim- 
ing the gospel. Now when all these personalities 
and agencies and influences give themselves up to 
the work of God on earth, and to the pulling down 
of the strongholds of sin and Satan, what can suc- 
cessfully resist them ? What cannot they accom- 
plish ? They can build churches by the thousands, 
mold nations, and govern the world. If this be 
true, then the thing our Republic wants is the 
church of God everywhere throughout its broad 
territory, creating and supporting its redemptive 
agencies and forming and leading public senti- 
ment. 

At this point I imagine you ask me to particu- 
larize. You say to me, " You are asking for more 
Christian churches, and that in the name of the 
Republic; tell us wherein the Christian churches 
benefit the Republic." In responding to this re- 
quest I will indicate two ways in which the Chris- 
tian church serves the American Republic. The 
first way is this : 

I. It protects and fosters those institutions which 
have proved a blessing to the Republic. 

I will center my thought here upon one institu- 
tion, viz., the Christian Sabbath. The rule is, 
where there is no church and no church-going 
there is no Sabbath, and where there is no Sabbath 
and no Sabbath-keeping there is no religion, and 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 447 

where there is no religion there is no God, and 
where there is no God there is no conscience, and 
where there is no conscience there is no respect for 
the rights of men, and where there is no respect 
for the rights of men there is no security for Hfe 
or property. Now take rehgion, God, conscience, 
respect for the rights of man, and protection of life 
and property out of the American Repubhc, and 
just how much of what is left would be worth 
having? 

How are men to be made good and honest and 
trustworthy and upright without a time for reli- 
gious culture? That population which habitually 
neglects the pulpit or its equivalent can ultimately 
be led by the merest charlatan, and will be. Look 
abroad over the map of popular freedom in the 
world and you will find that it is not accidental 
that Switzerland and Scotland and England and 
the United States, the lands where the Sabbath is 
best observed, are almost the entire map of safe 
popular government. 

The Sabbath is the starting-point of great good 
in our land, and any instrument which will guard and 
protect that is of incomparable value to us and our 
country. I ask no stronger argument for the Sab- 
bath than this, viz., the finest type of our Ameri- 
can men are its Christian Sabbatarians. They are 
first in morals ; they lead in all the great humani- 
ties; they project the highest and most practical 



448 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ideals ; they build up the noblest and most enviable 
lives; they leave behind them gifts redolent with 
blessings and beautiful with hopes and aspirations 
for the progress of their fellow-men and their 
country ; they leave Pratt Institutes and Packer 
Institutes, and beneficent homes and asylums. 
Their Sabbaths are their most telling days. Sab- 
bath rest makes them steady-nerved and clear- 
brained and strong-hearted and sweet-tempered 
and tender and broad in their sympathies. 

There is a myth concerning an old painter 
that by a happy chance he compounded one day 
a certain mordant which, colorless itself, possessed 
the power of heightening every color with which 
it was mixed. By the help of his discovery, from 
being a common artist he rose to the position of a 
noted master. His works were renowned for the 
marvelous brilliance of their tints. On his canvas 
was produced in exactest hue the waving emerald 
of the forest, the silver gleam of the river, the 
swimming Hght of the sunset, and the infinite azure 
of the sky. Everywhere and always the charm of 
the picture was due to that colorless nurse of color, 
which by its strange alchemy transfigured the crude- 
ness and coarseness of the common tint. 

My fellow-man, it is not mere ecclesiastical prej- 
udice which asserts that our American Sabbath 
has silently and similarly wrought vigor and at- 
tractiveness and power into our American life. 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 449 

All fair-minded judges pronounce it our social 
mordant. The student of legislation, the observer 
of our domestic and social prosperity, the inquirer 
into the excellences of our educational system, one 
and all find everywhere the influence of national 
reverence for the Lord's day. Unrecognized in 
its workings, the Sabbath is the element that has 
wrought out the choice beauty of the best things 
of which we boast. To it, and largely to it, we 
are indebted for juster laws, better schools, happier 
homes, greater security of social order, than can 
be found in any other land. 

There is a second way in which the Christian 
church serves the American Republic. It is this : 

2. It keeps before the people the true idea with 
regard to national greatness and national strength. 

This point leads right into the midst of one of 
the burning questions of the day, viz.. What are 
the strong pillars of our Republic ? What elements 
do we need to give our nation perpetuity? Even 
scholarly men, like the president of Harvard Col- 
lege, have brought their minds to bear upon this 
question and have felt the importance of trying to 
correct wrong views, which are so largely the pop- 
ular views. President Eliot has an elaborate article 
in a recent issue of the " Forum " on this subject, 
" Some Reasons Why the American Republic may 
Endure." The things which he enumerates he 
calls the new principles and forces which make for 



450 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the permanency of the Republic. In his article he 
first reviews the history of all the boasted republics 
of time and shows wherein their strength lay. But 
none of these republics proved permanent, and yet 
they had all of the things which, the casual obser- 
ver imagines, constitute our greatness. They had 
broad lands, great wealth, luxurious living, large 
inter-commerce, fine military equipment, fine arch- 
itecture, great achievements in sculpture and art, 
and vast population. These did not save the re- 
publics of Rome and Greece and Italy and France 
and Mexico, and alone, with no other possessions, 
these caimot save the American Republic. It 
ought not to be the destiny of the American Re- 
public to repeat the history of these ancient powers. 
But make New York a second Carthage, and Boston 
a second Athens, and Philadelphia a second Anti- 
och, and Washington a second Rome, and our Re- 
public will simply repeat the old experiment of 
history. When he has set forth this fact President 
Eliot proceeds to enumerate and elaborate the ele- 
ments in which our strength consists. They are 
such as these : toleration in religion, general edu- 
cation, better domestic relations, publicity of life 
(secured by the morning and evening issue of the 
daily press), platform discussion of everything that 
pertains to the public welfare, increase of mutual 
dependence of man on man and the growing sense 
of brotherhood and unity, and, finally, the greater 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 451 

hopefulness of men as they deal with God and with 
man and with the broad world. 

There is much that is tonic in this timely article 
of the president of Harvard. But my point is 
this : all that he presents, which is true and which 
is in harmony with history and with facts, the 
church of God has been presenting from the very 
beginning of our national life. The church has 
been asserting all along that it is not material 
wealth, but moral wealth, that makes a nation ; not 
broad acres, but principles. It is not gold, but 
men— men of God. It is the things of God that 
make a nation strong and keep it strong. It is 
character, personality, ideas, that make a nation. 

The church, in teaching American citizens, 
begins with God. The first essential is to get into 
right relation with God, to get His law written on 
the heart and incorporated in the life. Institutions 
must harmonize with His will, and so must rulers, 
and so must voters. The church, in instructing 
American citizens, sets Jesus Christ before men as 
the pattern after which to model. His views of 
man, man's dignity, man's rights, man's needs, 
must be held. His principles and His views of 
doctrines concerning God must be adopted. The 
divine love which shines out of His cross must be 
allowed to dominate all the affairs of human life. 
His hopefulness must be granted an entrance into 
the souls of men. His manhood must be repro- 



453 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

duced in our citizens, and the nation must wheel 
itself into line with the purposes of His coming 
kingdom of righteousness and peace and love. It 
is the mission of this nation and of every nation to 
prepare the way, so that the pure, white, and un- 
sullied feet of the Christ may be able to ascend the 
steps that lead to His millennial throne. 

" In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; 
As He died to make men holy, 
Let us die to make men free. 
Our God is marching on." 

The church of God is laboring, and has been 
laboring, to make our nation a Christian nation in 
the highest and truest sense, and to my mind there 
is nothing equal to that. That is the only road to 
perpetuity. There is a grand glory in a Christian 
nation. It is the greatest known living force in 
the world. Take England, for example. " Not 
alone with drum-beat," as Webster has put it, " has 
she encircled the earth." She has carried civiliza- 
tion and Christianity wherever she has carried her 
flag; and she has carried also with her flag her 
noble language, with its treasures of literature and 
science and religion. She has planted great in- 
stitutions and principles in every latitude of the 
globe. Even we have inherited much from her. 
All that is grand and good in our national life we 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 453 

have inherited from the Bible she gave us and 
from the Christian churches which Englishmen, 
and men kindred with them, have planted on our 
soil. 

Do I properly magnify and represent the Chris- 
tian church, this institution of God which announces 
the law of God, and which guards the day of God, 
and which labors to make the nation Christian? 
Is it the power in this land of ours which I have 
represented it to be? If so, then duty is plain, 
and there is no escape from duty. What is duty ? 
It is duty to give the Republic Christian churches. 
Build a church in every valley and put a bell on 
it, build a church on every hilltop and put a bell 
on it, build a church on every prairie and put a 
bell on it, build a church on every ranch of Texas 
and New Mexico and put a bell on it, build a 
church amid the snows of Alaska and put a bell 
on it. When you have done all this, then set 
these bells a-ringing, singly and all together. Let 
them ring out everywhere a " Hosanna to the Son 
of David!" and call all the people to Sabbath rest 
and Sabbath worship and Sabbath fellowship and 
Sabbath instruction. Keep the air vibrating with 
the ten thousand thousand chimes until, in the 
language of the Hebrew prophet, our land may 
rightly be called " Praise." When we have church 
bells everywhere, from Alaska to New Mexico, and 
from Maine to California, then we can challenge 



454: MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

them to do their God-assigned work for the Amer- 
ican RepubHc. We can say to them : 

" Ring out the old, ring in the new; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

" Ring out a slowly dying cause 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

" Ring out false pride in place and blood. 
The civic slander and the spite ; 
Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

•• Ring out the darkness of the land ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old. 
Ring in the thousand years of peace." 

But let me get a little nearer the duty of the 
morning, a little nearer the collection basket. We 
have found that the churches of God are blessings 
to our Republic ; the questions now are. Where 
shall we plant them, and how? The great cause 
of Home Missions, which knocks at our door this 
morning, answers both questions. Plant them at 
the strategic points which we have chosen in the 
North and West, and which form our field of labor, 
and plant them by contributing of your gold to 
replenish our treasury. Let there be no footsteps 
backward in giving and in sending. Brethren, a 
great field is open to us in the great West — fields 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 455 

as larg-e as Germany, as large as England, as large 
as France. You could take the whole of France 
and put it into the State of Texas and then have 
a border of twenty miles all around uncovered. 

San Francisco is only the center point of our 
territory west. It is as far to the end of Alaska 
from San Francisco as it is from here to San Fran- 
cisco. The six States recently received into the 
Union have nearly one fifth of the entire area of 
the United States if you exclude Alaska. And 
all this is our land. 

And remember the gigantic growth of population 
in these frontier States. It is just as gigantic as 
the land. The question of the Christian guidance 
of this our Titanic growth is the grave question 
which confronts us, and it is a question which 
touches the very life of the nation. The gigantic 
work to be done out there calls for gigantic giving 
here. We must give the great West Christian 
workers and Christian gold. We must give the 
great West Christian churches. We must not let 
the growth get ahead of the cultivation. Chicago 
is an illustration of the growth we may expect in 
Western fields. In 1830 the Chicago directory 
was not a very portly volume. The commercial 
and business section of it stands thus ; I will read 
you the whole of it : " Taverns, two ; Indian trad- 
ers, three; butchers, one; merchants, one." The 
poll list for the county election embraced thirty- 



456 xMAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 

two voters. To-day the directory of Chicago vs. 
larger than that of New York. To-day Chicago 
requires Lake Michigan as a goblet to satisfy its 
thirsty Hps. If that be an index of Western 
growth, soon the shanty or umbrella towns of to- 
day, with a great deal of outdoors to them, will 
rapidly become teeming centers of life. 

Although our task is great, there is one thing 
in our favor: our dominion is not fractional and 
therefore not hard of access. With the exception 
of Alaska, it lies in one undivided body and is ani- 
mated practically by one blood, one national lan- 
guage, and it is living under one law, enacted at 
one common center. This is a great advantage 
and a help in evangelizing the Republic. In this 
regard it contrasts with the British empire. Her 
cosmopolitan dominion is scattered over the world 
in forty-five parcels. 

When I look at the great work to be done, I 
thank God for the Home Missionary boards of the 
diflferent denominations, who are so alive to the 
needs of the hour and so willing to push the work. 
These boards have done grand service for our coun- 
try. I want to tell you this : I have found out by 
investigation that the first churches in Cleveland, 
in Sandusky, in Galena, in Beloit, in Dubuque, in 
Burlington, in Leavenworth, in Omaha, in Chey- 
enne, in Tacoma, and in other important centers, 
were Home Missionary churches. The Home Mis- 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 457 

sionary societies have founded over five sixths of 
all the churches in the great Western States. In 
view of this I am ready to-day to affirm that if you 
subtract the Home Missionary societies from our 
national history, you subtract the freedom from our 
Republic. Since this is so, we cannot be too lib- 
eral with our Home Missionary Society ; we can- 
not make our collection too large. 

Here I am face to face with the collection. I 
have mentioned that obnoxious word " collection." 
And the times are hard ; and I want more than 
usual, for more is needed. When I call at your 
homes to see you socially, you show me your 
palatial mansions, and your treasures of art and of 
beauty which you have brought from abroad; a 
word now and then drops out about some success- 
ful business enterprise ; and then there are hints of 
gain and of financial ability. But these are not the 
things we hear of, talk about, or think about when 
we are in the presence of the collection basket. 
We forget all about our palatial houses. We talk 
about going to the poorhouse. We canvass the 
cost of living. We figure up the school bills of 
our children. We lament our large tax bills. We 
look at how we are swindled by political corruption. 
We figure how much the city was cheated in the 
erection of the Soldiers' Arch. Then we come back 
to the point we started with : the times are hard, 
very hard. Do you know that in all this you only 



458 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

show me the debit side of the ledger, and not the 
credit side — your liabilities, and not your assets? 
What about those corner lots, those mortgages, 
those stocks, those dividends, rentals, that interest, 
those accumulations of past years? Oh, that 
debit side of your ledger, with taxes and debts! 
I sympathize with you. It is an awful burden 
and plague and worry. I come to your relief. I 
have a generous proposition to make. Let me tell 
you what I will do. I will take the debit side of 
the combined ledgers of this great church if you 
will give me the credit side of the combined ledgers, 
and I will pay your taxes and your children's school 
bills and the necessary expenses of your house- 
holds — eliminating the superfluities, of course, i.e., 
the debts which you incur by bowing down to and 
obeying a godless, carnalizing fashion. More than 
this, I will not only pay all necessary bills, — ne- 
cessary from a Christian standpoint, — but I will 
abolish all collections for home missions and foreign 
missions and city missions, and all missions, and I 
will contribute to all these grand essential causes, 
without a collection, from the credit side of your 
ledgers, and I will contribute so largely as to raise 
the name of this church in the estimation of the 
community and of all church boards and all de- 
served charity organizations. I am not through 
yet. And then, out of the remainder of the funds 
left, I will pay all the expenses of the church and 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC. 459 

of the chapels, and I will generously double the 
salaries of all the salaried workers, and add a third 
to the salary of the choir, and give a trifle of a 
dividend to my faithful elders and deacons and 
trustees to encourage them and make them more 
faithful. And when I have done all this I will 
guarantee to show you a large and a respectable 
balance. That is my offer. If it is accepted on 
the spot, the contribution of this church to-day to 
home missions will be the largest ever known in its 
history. 

If you reject my proposition, then forever cease 
talking about hard times on collection Sabbath, or 
of school bills or taxes, or of the debit side of your 
ledger. If my proposition is rejected and you 
think you can do better for the home mission 
cause and for the reputation of this church than I 
have proposed to do, I submit to your decision and 
step out of the way and give you your golden op- 
portunity. The collection will now be taken up. 



XV. 

THE HONOR DUE TO OUR PATRIOTIC 
DEAD. 



461 



XV. 



THE HONOR DUE TO OUR PATRIOTIC 
DEAD.* 

Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
we welcome you to-night to this temple of God. 
The story of your patriotic service and the story 
of this patriotic church match. It is fitting that 
loyal men should celebrate loyalty in a loyal place. 
This temple, reared while the smoke of battle was 
rolling over the land, rose to its splendid propor- 
tions with the American flag floating from yonder 
turret. A flag was raised the very moment the 
turret was strong enough to support it, and, without 
being lowered a single time, it floated there day 
and night during the whole of the nation's perilous 
crisis. Its continual waving in mid-air wore it into 
shreds, until it passed out of sight and lost itself 
in that great victory which we celebrate to-night, 

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, 
on Memorial Sabbath, to the Grant Post of the Grand Army of the 
Republic 

465 



4G6 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

whose coming it had been signaling for weary years. 
Not only was yonder turret loyal, this pulpit was 
loyal. The man in the pulpit was himself an 
American flag, starred and barred through and 
through with a patriotism that was seen and felt 
the broad land over. The story of your life and 
the story of this temple match ; both are full of 
patriotic reminiscences. 

In entering upon this service, let us keep clearly 
before our minds its definite object ; let us sweep 
away all misunderstanding. The object of this 
Memorial service is not the glorification of war. 
It is to hold up the horrors of war; it is to talk 
of tattered ensigns and decimated regiments and 
soldiers' graves and disfigured bodies and broken 
hearts and shattered homes, that in the presence 
of these ghastly things we may magnify the moral 
worth and heroism of the sons of America and the 
grandsons of the Pilgrims, who could easier meet 
and endure these horrors than allow the right to 
be trampled underfoot and the nation rent and 
dishonored. It is not the design of Memorial day 
to cultivate the brutal in man, or to represent 
human life as cheap, or to fire the minds of young 
America with a love and admiration for a barba- 
rous business, which drenches the world in blood 
and makes widows of wives and orphans of helpless 
children. 

America has never been a warlike nation; she 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 467 

has never prided herself upon her standing army 
or her navy or her military academies. Our army 
has been, and is now, nothing more than a mere 
police force reduced to the smallest possible peace 
minimum. We are a nation of citizens, and not a 
nation of soldiers ; we are a repubhc of men after 
the Washingtonian type, and not a republic of men 
after the Napoleonic or Caesarean type. Washing- 
ton, who was the father of our country, ceased from 
war as soon as it was possible to cease, and this is 
what his sons have always done. In history he is 
noted not only as " first in war," but also as " first 
in peace." In our Civil War the army of the 
North, like the army of the nation in Revolutionary 
times, was an army of men mustered directly from 
the workshop and the farm and the store and the 
court-room and the college and the pulpit. Our 
troops were rallied by a magnificent outburst of the 
moral sense of the people. They rallied that they 
might stand up for God's cause and for freedom, 
and for the integrity and the wholeness of the 
nation, and for the future good of the States, and 
even for the best interests of their fellow-citizens 
who drew the sword against them and turned their 
guns upon them. When this moral sense, which 
was the echo of the mind of God, was satisfied, 
when secession, with its national curse and crime 
of African slavery, became a lost cause, when the 
nation came from the furnace a new moral person 



468 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and prospectively a united nation, beautiful and 
pure as the shining gold of the seventh refining, 
then our soldier-patriots dissolved themselves into 
the ranks of civilians. That day which brought 
the close of the civil strife found the American 
Republic again out of sympathy with the blood- 
stained Napoleon and the despotic and armor-clad 
Csesar. We were then, and we now are, Washing- 
tonian inside and outside, lengthwise from head to 
foot, and breadthwise from finger-tip to finger-tip. 
The American Republic is one grand peace society 
believing in and advocating arbitration for the na- 
tions of the nineteenth century versus war. 

In speaking thus against war I am speaking the 
mind of the members of tlie Grand Army of the 
Republic. Old soldiers never desire war; they are 
the truest peace-men on earth. Abraham Lincoln 
said to the South, " There shall be no war until 
you compel it." And there was no war until the 
South compelled it. It was Grant, the great sol- 
dier, who established national arbitration. Wash- 
ington, Jackson, the Harrisons, Taylor, Grant, had 
no war during their administrations, and they were 
all old soldiers, the nation's veterans. All of our 
wars have begun under politician presidents. 

I find among my excerpts this vivid picture, 
which I keep because of its striking character. It 
teaches us how our veterans regard war per se. It 
is a sketch from the experience of a Vermont vet- 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 469 

eran. The man's feelings could be duplicated a 
hundredfold in the Grand Army of the Republic. 
Describing a battle in which he fought, he writes : 
" The enemy are going to charge us. Orders run 
along the lines that every bullet fired must hit a 
man. I select my man while he is yet beyond 
range. Soon our volley shall prove a veritable 
flame of fire. On comes the foe. My man is still 
before me; I have eyes for no other; he is a tall, 
soldierly fellow and wears the stripes of a sergeant. 
As he comes nearer I imagine that he is looking 
fixedly at me as I am looking at him. I admire 
his coolness ; he looks neither to the right nor to 
the left. The man on his right hand is struck and 
goes down, but he does not falter; he moves right 
on. I am going to kill that man. I have a rest 
for my gun, and I cannot miss him ; he is living his 
last minute on earth. The order to fire is given, 
and there is a billow of flame and a billow of smoke 
and a fierce crash, and four thousand bullets are 
fired into that compact mass of advancing men. 
There is not one volley, but another and another, 
until there remains not a living man to fire at. 
The smoke drifts slowly away, and our men cheer 
and yell. All we can see is a meadow heaped with 
the dead and the dying. As our line advances I 
look for my victim ; he is lying on his back, eyes 
half shut, his fingers clutching the sod. He gasps 
and is dead, and I pass on. He fell by my bullet, 



470 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and I am entitled to all the glory. Do I swing my 
cap and cheer? Do I point him out and expect to 
be congratulated? No, no; I have no cheers, I 
feel no elation. That man's agonized face is in 
my soul, and it looks out at me in the daytime and 
in the darkness of the night; and it will haunt and 
torment me all through life, and I am in dreadful 
terror lest it haunt me all through eternity. Carry- 
ing that agonizing picture in my soul, I for one say, 
* A thousand curses on war.' " 

We believe in war only as a stern necessity ; but 
when it does become a stern necessity, when divine 
logic can get utterance only by the mouth of the 
cannon, then we enter it as a part of our religion. 
This nation of ours has never accepted of war ex- 
cept when it has been assured that war was a God- 
assigned duty, and only when it has been able to 
carry its conscience with it into battle. Did this 
Republic ever fire the first gun in any war? In 
the Revolution, which blood was shed first upon 
the streets of Boston ? The blood of the soldier 
of Britain, or the blood of the citizen of Boston? 
In our Civil War, was it Sumter which opened the 
fire, or was it Sumter which was fired upon ? From 
the standpoint of the North the Civil War was a 
stern necessity, to flee which would have been 
treason upon the part of our fathers and brethren, 
who bravely fell and whose graves deserve the 
brightest laurels of earth. From the Northern 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 471 

Standpoint our Civil War was a divine dispensation 
whereby, according to tlie metliod of heaven, our 
nation was first made pure that afterward it might 
be made permanently peaceful. 

Memorial day is not devoted to the art of war, 
which our American soul abhors; it is devoted to 
the praise of peace and liberty, which, our fathers 
found, could be purchased only at the cost of their 
lives. They were not fond of being shot at or 
dying ; being shot at and dying were accepted as 
stern necessities ; such was the price of liberty. 
This is the day on which we give God praise that 
the sword has been beaten into the plowshare and 
the spear into the pruning-hook. This is the day 
given up to symposiums upon patriotism, to find 
out what patriotism is and what it will do and how 
it can be cultivated. This is the day given up to 
the study of history, that in history we may see the 
rule of God, and the play of the human, and the 
operation and the issues of moral principles in na- 
tional life. This is the day dedicated to the men 
who patriotically sacrificed their property and their 
lives that we might have civil and religious liberty. 
They fell, but the Union lives, and the power of 
their sacrifice will forever circulate in the life of the 
nation. The hour is to be used in thinking of these 
men who are in the silent tent of green. Name 
their names with respect and reverence. Repeat 
their deeds and describe their battles. Crown their 



472 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

graves with the beauties of earth, and proclaim by 
symbolic flowers the moral beauty which you see 
in their deeds. This day gives to every soldier's 
grave a voice. Every grave declares that our na- 
tional privileges are blood-bought. These graves 
are the price of liberty, equality, fraternity, and 
unity. They are a testimony to this fact, that our 
land and laws and institutions are worth dying for. 
They are a witness to the value of American citi- 
zenship. 

The period of the war is not an empty period ; 
it is full of revelations and lessons ; it declares the 
strength of our Republic. Not another nation on 
the globe could have stood such a strain and have 
come forth a whole nation. Out of our terrible 
conflict there comes an assurance of a long and a 
strong future. A nation which at most will only reel 
and rock, but will not rend nor break, under the 
greatest possible pressure and strain, will certainly 
not collapse under minor stresses. Our war was 
a crucial test, and it has shown that America can 
always count upon great men for great crises. 
Greatness is slumbering in the North and in the 
South; it only needs opportunity to awaken it. 
Let necessity create another war and Illinois will 
give the country another Lincoln, and Ohio another 
Grant and Sherman and Sheridan and Stanton, and 
Indiana another Logan, and New York another 
Seward, and Pennsylvania another Thaddeus 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 473 

Stephens, and Massachusetts another Charles 
Sumner and another Henry Wilson. 

But let us keep to the main thread of our sub- 
ject. The occasion which has brought us together 
calls us to honor our patriotic dead. The practi- 
cal question of the hour is, How can this best be 
done ? How can loving Americans honor the great 
American dead ? To this question you will allow 
me to offer several answers. 

I. We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by 
simply naming them and making their names 
household zvords and national pozvers. 

To pronounce the name of a man is a very 
simple thing, but it makes the man who is named 
known, and where the man is a hero knowledge is 
power. Why is Paul such a power in the world ? 
Because he is talked about and named and known. 
The same thing explains why Shakespeare is a 
power and an influence. It is our duty to talk about 
those men who saved our nation and stood between 
us and national humiliation. We owe it to them as 
a debt of gratitude, and we owe it to ourselves. We 
owe it to them and to ourselves to conserve their 
influence for the good of the nation. Let this 
nation cease talking of Abraham Lincoln for a 
single generation, and what power will Abraham 
Lincoln have in the future of America? By nam- 
ing him and talking about him we give him an 
earthly immortality and also a power to repeat 



474 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

himself in our sons. Talk, then, about the heroes 
of the war! Talk about Ellsworth, who, though 
a mere lad, was the first hero to fall a martyr to 
the flag. His death was a blast from the silver 
trumpet of liberty which brought a hundred thou- 
sand men to the defense of the flag he loved. Talk 
about Mac-Pherson, who died at the age of thirty- 
five. Talk about Sherman, the great soldier, the 
leader of the campaign from Chattanooga to At- 
lanta. Talk about Sheridan, the hero of Win- 
chester, and about Hooker, whose name will never 
cease to be linked with the clouds of the precipi- 
tous Lookout Mountain. Talk about Meade, whose 
fame is enshrined in the famous Gettysburg, and 
about Burnside, who will never be forgotten so 
long as the story of the defense of Knoxville is 
told. Talk about Logan, who founded Memorial 
day. Talk about Grant, to whom all the com- 
rades willingly give the palm for greatness, whose 
name is the synonym of victory. Talk about 
Farragut, the sea-king of Mobile Bay ; and about 
the unsurpassed Admiral Foote of Fort Henry and 
Fort Donaldson and Island No. lo. None of these 
are living. How rapidly the roll of the Grand 
Army of the Republic is shortening! It will not 
be long until these graves must be handed over 
to the sons of veterans for decoration and safe- 
keeping. 

But I would not have you stop the roll-call 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD, 475 

when you have named these conspicuous names to 
which I have referred. There are thousands upon 
thousands of names, inconspicuous, but just as 
noble. Like the soil at the foot of Mount Wash- 
ington, they are of the same stuff as that which 
crowns the summit that overlooks the continent. 
The summit of Mount Washington towers because 
the soil at its base upholds it. It was these thou- 
sands on thousands of unnamed ones that made 
Grant and Sherman and Sheridan. Let every man 
who did his duty be honored, whether his shoul- 
ders bore the stars of a general, or the eagle of a 
colonel, or the bars of a captain, or the stripes of 
a sergeant, or the simple blue of a private. 

It is a legend among dwellers by the Rhine that 
on a certain night every year, when the moon is 
at its full, the imperial Charles leaves his tomb and 
visits the scenes he loved. Walking upon an arch 
of light, he crosses the river, calling down a bene- 
diction upon the land, blessing fields and flocks, 
vineyards and cities, the hamlets and the sleeping 
people, and then softly returns to his dreamless 
slumbers. The legend is a vehicle of fact. The 
nobly true of our land, who have nobly lived and 
who have nobly died, can never be imprisoned with 
the dead. Their Hves are grafted upon the im- 
mortal life of God's conquering and reigning right- 
eousness. They pour down light upon us and 
breathe inspiration into us ; they plant thoughts of 



47G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

power in our sterile brains ; they are the pulses 
in the earthquake that is gathering power under 
the thrones of iniquity. Our Republic will live so 
long as it reveres their memories and emulates their 
virtues. The occasion to-day calls us to live with 
these men of the historic past, that we may be 
blessed by them and taught by them. 

There is in the Corcoran Art Gallery, at Wash- 
ington, D. C, a striking picture of old colonial days 
which serves me as an illustration. It is a scene 
from the battle of Monmouth. An aged fifer, his 
gray locks streaming in the wind, leads his com- 
pany into the battle. By his side there is a 
drummer-boy looking anxiously into the old man's 
face and catching from him the tune and the step 
of the music of liberty. So from the lives and 
deeds of the men who fell in our Civil War, and 
from the cause for which they died, and from the 
results which they achieved, we take our step and 
learn the lesson of the cost of our institutions and 
liberties, and how to perpetuate and build up our 
nation. Over seven thousand miles of our country 
were swept by the tide of war; over two millions 
of men marched in solid phalanx in the army of 
freedom ; over five hundred thousand men filled a 
soldier's grave ; and every mile in the line of march, 
and every man in the ranks, and every grave, is 
fraught with a blessing if we only keep ourselves 
familiar with these and hold them in'^ honor. In 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 477 

this broad land of ours, with its teeming millions, 
not a single name of a single loyal soldier should 
be allowed to lapse into oblivion. Somebody 
somewhere should be found able to name and able 
to tell the sacrifices of the least-known member of 
the Grand Army of the Republic. This is the very 
minimum of honor which we owe to all. 

My fellow- men, there are healthful memories 
which carry in them healthful feelings — memories 
of our sorrows, memories of our sacrifices, memo- 
ries of our conflicts. It is helpful to cherish these 
once in a while and to allow the old feelings which 
they carry in them to thrill through us again. A 
strange feeling swept through you when the first 
rebel gun sent its iron ball over Charleston harbor 
to strike with fatal impact the walls of Fort Sumter; 
a thrill of patriotism shot through you like a bolt 
of fire and set you all aglow with loyalty. Feel 
that thrill of patriotism again — feel it to-night. 
There are syllables, grand and loyal, which when 
pronounced are like the striking notes rung from 
old liberty bell on old Independence Hall. You 
know these syllables ; they are such as these : 
Major Anderson, Elmer Ellsworth, the Massachu- 
setts Sixth, the New York Seventh, the Brooklyn 
Fourteenth. Ring out these grand and loyal 
syllables again — ring them out to-night. There 
are names, sacred names, which have the power to 
cement our national Union. They were great when 



478 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

they were pronounced away back between '6i and 
'65, and they are great now: Abraham Lincoln, 
Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Philip H. 
Sheridan. Pronounce these names again — pro- 
nounce them to-night. With them still keep binding 
our national Union. Memories, victories, successful 
causes; armies marching to the defense of the op- 
pressed and battling for the conquest of the right; 
great and living principles; the great men and the 
true men and the holy men of the nation — my 
fellow-men, these are the great liberty bells of the 
Republic; keep ringing these and ringing these, 
and by their ringing call the Republic up to its 
high destiny. By these 

" Ring out the old, ring in the new; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

" Ring out a slowly dying cause 

And ancient forms of party strife; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

" Ring out false pride in place and blood. 
The civic slander and the spite ; 
Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

" Ring out the darkness of the land; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace.** 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 470 

2. We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by 
keeping in the light the ideas for luhich tJiey fought. 

The Civil War was a battle of ideas. It was not 
a conquest for spoils ; it was a conflict of opinions. 
There was a thinker back of every rifle, and a 
thousand thinkers under every regimental flag. 
So far as the North was concerned, the war was 
waged for preservation and not for destruction. 

The first idea for which the men of the North 
fought was this : this Republic is a Nation, and the 
word " Nation " is spelled with a capital N. It is 
not a confederacy, it is not a social compact, which 
can be broken by the States at will. The national 
government is supreme ; it was not made by the 
States, therefore it cannot be broken by the States. 
If our national government was not made by the 
States, by whom was it made? The very first 
words of the national Constitution answer that 
question : " We the people do ordain this Consti- 
tution and government." If the Constitution had 
been made to read, "We the States do ordain," 
the South would have been right and the North 
wrong. The people are supreme, not the States. 
Besides this, by far the greatest part of the terri- 
tory which was carried out of the Union by the 
Southern secession was territory bought and paid 
for by the federal government, and not by the 
Southern States. Florida, Texas, Louisiana, who 



480 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

purchased and paid for these? The United States 
government. 

The idea of the American nationahty in contra- 
distinction from an American compact which could 
be broken at will first presented itself to Alexander 
Hamilton. He saw that national union was essen- 
tial to growth and strength, so he applied all his 
power and used all his resources to give supremacy 
to that idea. He introduced it to the newly in- 
dependent States back in the times of the Ameri- 
can Revolution. He lodged it in the minds of the 
newly emancipated people. He lifted it into some 
power, but he was unable to make it the sovereign 
idea in the political life of his times. Jefferson saw 
in Hamilton's idea, as he thought, the return of the 
people to monarchy. He beheld in it a return of 
the domination which the colonies had just cast off, 
and the loss of the freedom which it had taken 
seven years of war and famine to secure. State 
rights seemed to him, and to many others of the 
earlier statesmen, another name for liberty. Ham- 
ilton died with the gloomiest forebodings as to the 
future of this country. He doubted whether it 
would ever rise into the consciousness of a great 
nation. After Hamilton came Webster, his great 
successor, the greatest man of the second period 
of our government, as Hamilton was the greatest 
man of the first period. The idea on behalf of 
which Webster put forth his whole strength was 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 481 

the idea of Hamilton, the idea of American nation- 
ality. All of his principal speeches are full of it. 
His famous senatorial triumphs were won on its 
behalf. He secured a new place for Hamilton's 
thought in the minds and in the hearts of his 
fellow-citizens ; he clothed it in the language of 
reason ; he set it forth in all the attraction of pa- 
triotic imagination; he sent it home to the soul of 
the whole North with the authority of his match- 
less eloquence. Nevertheless, in one half of the 
land, the Southland, his ideas were rejected and 
his doctrine scorned. Jefferson had an able and 
desperate successor in John C. Calhoun. He held 
the South loyal to the idea of State rights. Under 
the faith in State rights the Southern States se- 
ceded from the Union, and hence the Civil War. 
The intellectual contests of Hamilton and Jefferson, 
Webster and Calhoun, were repeated on the battle- 
field. They were hotly debated at Shiloh and 
Antietam, at Gettysburg and in the Wilderness. 
For a long time the battle was even, but finally it 
was won by the army of the North for the preser- 
vation of the Union. This was the result of your 
service and of the service of the men whom you 
commemorate to-night. You and they lifted into 
sovereign power the idea of the American nation- 
ality. You purchased for us the right to spell 
" Nation " with a capital N. The flag which to-day 
floats over every city from Maine to the Gulf, and 



482 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is a symbol of the 
union and strength and national grandeur which 
you and your comrades achieved. 

But the war was not only intellectual, it had a 
moral side. Patriotic men began to feel that the 
nation could not be half free and half slave. 
Slavery began to appear in its true light, a mon- 
strous sin, and the guns of the nation were pointed 
against that sin. The cry rent the air, " Free the 
slaves ! Strike down the nation's curse and shame ! " 
My fellow-men, it was not until this cry was raised, 
it was not until the great moral principle of free- 
dom for all was brought into the war and the 
Emancipation Proclamation was issued, that victory 
began to perch upon our banners. Prior to this it 
was one continued Bull Run. Then it was that 
God took our side, because then it was that we 
took God's side. Then it was that away above 
the crimson surge of conflict was God, holding in 
His mighty palm the stars of our flag, which, 
though dimmed, were not to be allowed to fall as 
dying meteors down the sky. Up to this point the 
African slave had been an incarnate sarcasm upon 
the boasted liberty of the Republic ; but after this, 
with limbs unfettered and sword-arm free, he 
fought for the Republic, and the Republic won. 
Soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, you 
made the black man free ; now stand by him and 
make his freedom a thing of value. Remember 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 483 

that the genius of liberty is an equal chance for 
every man to rise and enrich himself and be a man 
among men. 

3. We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by 
exalting the influence of their deeds. 

The battle of the heroes of '61 for liberty blessed 
the North, but it did more. Like every battle 
fought for liberty, it blessed the world. William 
Tell did not live for Switzerland only, he lived 
for all nations. In all lands where his story is told 
it stirs to action the innate instinct for liberty. The 
heroism of the Hebrews fighting their way from 
Egypt to Canaan has been a seed which has pro- 
duced many a like uprising and which has given the 
world many a land of promise. When, in the heroic 
period of our national history, the period between 
'61 and '65, our armies fought down African sla- 
very, they fought the battles of liberty for the king- 
doms of the Old World. The cannon-balls and hot 
shells fired into and through the ships of the slave- 
holders of America were also fired into and through 
the slave-ships that plied the Mediterranean. They 
were long-range shots, but they sank the Mediter- 
ranean slave-ships out of sight. The American 
war told for good even in the heart of Africa, where 
black men were sold by black men. The world 
has been a freer world ever since. The American 
Civil War tells to-day. This very hour it is put- 
ting heart and hope into the would-be freemen 0/ 



484 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Cuba, whom may the God of battles bless and 
crown with an everlasting victory. Every battle 
for liberty has been a blessing, and a blessing for 
those who have fought against liberty. This is 
the impartial verdict of history. Take an illustra- 
tion. 

American independence was the best thing 
which ever happened for England, England did 
not think so at the time, but history has proved it. 
It is said that when Lord North heard the news 
of the surrender of Cornwallis, it was like receiv- 
ing a cannon-ball into his bosom. The hope which 
he had cherished for twelve years had gone. He 
paced the room wildly, and, waving his arms around 
in mental distress, he fairly shrieked, " It is all over! 
It is all over!" He thought England's greatness 
had been permanently injured ; but what do facts 
say to-day? This is the record: England of the 
present is England in its greatest glory and power. 
This Republic has kept the old mother-country 
from falling asleep or napping. It has been a 
friendly, stimulating rival ; it has been a check and 
a safeguard against England's tendency to tyranny; 
it has sent through England a modifying and lib- 
eralizing influence. For a whole century England 
has been becoming Americanized and has been 
growing decent respect for the rights of the indi- 
vidual man. 

Both England and America are satisfied now with 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 485 

the Revolutionary War and with its results. This 
was demonstrated at the celebration of the one- 
hundredth anniversary of the surrender of York- 
town, the event which brought that war to a fitting 
close. During that celebration, by a happy inspi- 
ration, the officer in charge gave the order to the 
United States troops to run up the old British flag 
on the spot where it had been hauled down a cen- 
tury before and to salute it. The British flag was 
thrown into the breeze and it was saluted by 
American guns. This is what took place on our 
side of the Atlantic. On the other side of the 
Atlantic London spoke for old England. London 
answered back in a grand crash of drums and in 
the clear ringing notes of the royal band, which 
sounded down the Strand playing " The star- 
spangled banner, long may it wave!" 

While bitter wars seem in the course of human 
history to be necessary, God be praised that time 
brings a reconciliation in which the old contesting 
foes can rejoice together. 

As we have spoken of England, so we may speak 
of our own sunny South. The South by the war has 
lost nothing, but has gained everything. True, it has 
talked about " the lost cause," but the cause lost is 
infinitely better lost than gained. When we under- 
stand what " the lost cause " is it loses all its glamour. 
That cause was defined by the vice-president of the 
Confederacy to be "African slavery asit exists among 



48G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

US." "The lost cause" was a secession to enable 
one set of men without interference or remonstrance 
to own a weaker set of men as chattels, and the 
doctrine of State rights was used as an instrument 
to secure this end. That is the whole case in a 
nutshell. I think perhaps I can illustrate " the 
lost cause " still more plainly by relating just here 
a scene in the South which took place at the close 
of the war. It was given me by a friend who was 
there and saw it. In a Virginia town occupied by 
our troops, a Virginia gentleman beyond the age 
of military service was summoned to answer to a 
complaint of assault and battery. He was an ur- 
bane and courteous gentleman of expansive waist- 
coat, who most blandly declared to the court that 
he was utterly unconscious how such a mistake as 
his summons could ever have been made. It ap- 
peared, however, that the complainant was a colored 
man upon whom the gentleman had applied his 
horse-whip. The astonishment of the accused 
cannot be described ; he looked at the black man 
and at the ofificer alternately and said in a half 
helpless way, "Assault and battery! Walloping 
a nigger assault and battery! Great heavens! 
what have we come to ? " There, that is " the lost 
cause." " The lost cause " is simply the loss of a 
white man's right to wallop at pleasure a black 
man. "The lost cause" has long ceased to have 
any respectability. With " the lost cause " has 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 487 

passed away the foolish assumption that the South 
lost any property or became any poorer by the 
emancipation. It used to be said that four thou- 
sand millions of property were destroyed by freeing 
the four millions of slaves; but this ridiculous as- 
sumption is now abandoned. There was no de- 
struction whatever. The only change which took 
place was this : instead of one man owning a hun- 
dred men, each of the one hundred came to own 
himself. The white man's loss was the black- 
man's gain. The property was all there. The 
columns of profit and less balance. The South 
was not robbed of the black people ; the black 
people are there still. And they should stay there ; 
that is where they belong. They are the children 
of the tropics, and their mission is to work in the 
tropics. They are worth more to themselves and 
to the world in the tropics than they can be any- 
where else. No man ever rendered the South a 
greater service than did Abraham Lincoln when 
he issued his war Proclamation of Emancipation. 
By that one act he turned aside the curse of the 
liberty-loving God from the South and opened the 
land to free industry, which always carries with it 
a prosperity blessed of God. I do not hesitate to 
say that in a generation's time the loudest praises 
of Abraham Lincoln will be the praises spoken by 
Southern lips. That time is already here. There 
is no finer eulogy of our martyred President than 



488 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

that pronounced by Henry Grady of Atlanta. 
Publicly to-day the South proclaims that she is 
glad that slavery is no more. The Grand Army 
of the Republic has made our land free and pros- 
perous. 

4. We Jionor our heroic and patriotic dead by exalt- 
ing the humane tvay in which they closed the ivar. 

Our soldiers who fought were the very first to 
forgive the foe when the Rebellion grounded its 
arms. It was they also who taught the men at 
home to forgive. It was veterans who first deco- 
rated the graves of Confederate prisoners buried in 
our Northern cemeteries. They led the country 
in forgiveness. I rejoice in this, because it is a 
grand exhibit of the power and advance of Chris- 
tian civilization. It magnifies Christianity. Com- 
pare the customs of war in the past and in the 
present, and see how Christianity has mitigated the 
horrors of war. Go back a few thousand years. 
There you see a great army gathered about the 
city of Troy. Out from the city comes the brave 
Hector, one of the Trojans, to meet the dread 
Achilles. The champions stand face to face, and 
Hector falls before the blows of Achilles. What 
then? In accordance with the savage usages of 
those times, Achilles the conqueror drags Hector's 
dead body, chained to his chariot, three times 
around the walls of Troy, and then throws it 
mutilated at the feet of his broken-hearted wife. 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 489 

Andromache. That is the civilization of the past. 
Look now at the scene of Appomattox Court-house. 
There stands the victor, and you hear him talk to 
the defeated hero. " How many men have you ? " 
asks General Grant of General Lee. The number 
is told. " Are they in need of rations? " " Yes." 
Rations are ordered immediately. " Have they 
horses ? " " They have." " Let them keep them, 
for they will need them to till, the ground in sup- 
port of their families, and I will give them seed- 
corn that they may have a harvest the coming 
season." My fellow-men, there is a long distance 
from Achilles dragging the dead Hector around the 
walls of Troy to General Grant sending the con- 
quered Confederate army back to the Southland to 
hve in their old homes, to enter again into the 
Union, and to enjoy again their State and federal 
rights. The long distance is accounted for, be- 
cause Grant and his men were Christians and for- 
gave like Christians. Does any one say, " Oh, 
but the North took the property of General Lee 
and turned it into a national graveyard in which to 
bury the Union soldiers with honor. There it is at 
Arlington, the Mecca of America. It was nothing 
short of the finest irony of history to sow the acres 
of his dooryard with the bones of his victims and 
make his home a cemetery. The ArHngton sol- 
diers' cemetery was the old homestead of General 
Lee " ? Wait ! give the facts. The facts are these : 



490 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the North paid for that ground ; the United States 
government paid the Lee family one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars for those acres. There is not 
a single stain upon the magnanimity of the free 
people of the North in closing up the war and in 
dealing with their brethren of the South. No ; the 
Republic, bleeding though it was at every pore, 
held no State trials, closed no prison doors upon 
political offenders, and reared no scaffolds amid the 
ashes of the Rebellion. Andrew Johnson tried to 
do this. In his early frenzy for revenge he deter- 
mined to try to execute all of the rebel leaders. 
He had General Lee indicted and brought before 
the civil courts. General Lee appealed to General 
Grant, to whom he had surrendered and by whom 
he had been paroled. Grant claimed Lee as his 
prisoner, and declared that so long as he refrained 
from violating his parole, no court in the land 
should try or condemn him. He took Lee out of 
the bands of Johnson. Johnson would have ruined 
and spoiled the generous and conciliatory treat- 
ment of Appomattox. His conduct was a breach 
of faith, and if it had prevailed it would have un- 
done Appomattox and have at once inaugurated 
another war. Because of Grant's magnanimous 
stand, because he threw himself between the raging 
President and the Confederate general, not a single 
scaffold was erected and not a single execution 
took place. 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. \i)\ 

I am here to say that this is absolutely un- 
matched in the annals of civilization, ancient or 
modern. Our heroes of '6i to '65 followed na- 
ture, and went so far as to put flowers upon the 
graves of the Confederate dead. Nature, when 
the war ceased to plow her valleys with cannon- 
balls, healed the scars which these iron bolts made. 
She even ordered wild roses to bloom through the 
broken drumheads, and she commanded the daisies 
to look out of the shattered shells with eyes of 
gold. Under her benediction battle-fields to-day 
are harvest- fields. The heroes of '61 to '65 fol- 
lowed nature and covered over everything which 
should be forgotten, and in the place of the Minie 
ball gave the right hand of brotherhood. We have 
just as much reason to be proud of the manner in 
which our hero soldiers closed the war as we have 
of the manner in which they conducted the war. 

5. We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by 
being true men, and, as true men, by faithfully fight- 
ing the battles of our day as they fought the battles 
of their day. 

The flower of a beautiful and true hfe is the 
flower to put upon the soldier's grave. Trueness 
to our country is the best way to honor the sol- 
dier who fell in the defense of our country. The 
best citizen, the best patriot, the best son of his 
country, is he who gives the best manhood to his 
country. He is the man who writes upon his na- 



492 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ture the ten commandments and the eight beati- 
tudes. You can have a Grand Army only when 
the ranks are filled with grand men. Soldiers of 
the Grand Army of the Republic, recognize the call 
of the hour! Our nation calls for hundreds and 
thousands of true men. There is treason still to 
be put down. There is the treason of a cowardly 
silence when patriotism and duty call us to cry out 
against the destructive sins of the land. This must 
be put down. There is treason in the Senate hall ; 
there is treason in the political caucus; there is 
treason at the ballot-box — the selling of votes and 
the manipulation of votes and the intimidation of 
votes. There is treason in office which shows itself 
in the acceptance of bribes and rewards. It is your 
duty to put down treason in all of these forms. 
The traitor in the time of peace should be shot 
just as the traitor in the time of war was shot. He 
should be shot with the black ball. He should be 
shot with the cannon of public indignation and ex- 
ecration. He should be fired out of office and out 
of citizenship, and he should be buried in everlast- 
ing oblivion. 

Soldiers of the Republic, the battles of the present 
are morally identical with the battles of the past. 
The form of warfare only has changed. The moral 
conflicts waged in our nation are as truly battles 
as were the conflicts of Gettysburg and Lookout 
Mountain. You have a duty in these as you had 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 493 

a duty in those. What are the moral conflicts 
whose roll-call you should hear to-day ? They are 
such as these : the battle for temperance, for social 
purity, for the rights of the red man and the black 
man and the Mongolian, the battle of labor against 
capital and of capital against labor, the anti-pov- 
erty battle. Besides these there are battles against 
the deadly isms which have been imported to our 
land and which are warring against the very life of 
our nation. Our country is the land where the 
battles of the future are destined to be fought, and 
where they have already opened. In the push of 
discovery and of civilization there is no land be- 
yond this. The fields of America are the outer- 
most fields of the earth, and here the nations of the 
Old World crowd together and meet, and here the 
great problems and questions of the ages must be 
debated and settled. Rally around the true flag 
in these moral battles. Fire no blank cartridges, 
but pour hot shot into every form of evil. Deal 
not in feeble negations, but in strong positive state- 
ments, and fire these with the power of propelling 
conviction. Present a solid phalanx of true steel 
against every untrue and false thing. For ex- 
ample, let no one run the red flag of anarchism 
over the stars and stripes, neither let any one run 
the stars and stripes over the red flag. The two 
flags must never have any sort of union. Anar- 
chism must not take the American Republic under 



494 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

its protection, neither must the American Republic 
take anarchism under its protection. We are living 
in a day when our country needs, above all things, 
intense Americans, who will Americanize every 
foreign thing, and will on no account allow Amer- 
ica to become foreignized. Our fathers and bro- 
thers died for our country ; it is our duty to live for 
it. We must pay a price as they paid a price. 
The price which we must pay for liberty is a pure 
manhood and an eternal vigilance. The monument 
which I would place by the grave of our noble 
dead would be, not a cold marble statue, but an 
honorable, wide-awake, honest, intelligent, moral, 
God-fearing American citizen. 

Fellow-Americans, I have great hopes for our 
country for which our soldiers died. To me it is 
the great Niagara in the landscape of the nations. 
What roar and dash and tumultuous rolling and 
wild hurricane there are in the waters of Niagara! 
There is devouring, perplexing, fermenting, bewil- 
dering activity. But out of this roar and dash and 
wildness and fury there rises a silvery column of 
spray, which the sunshine penetrates and tints into 
loveliness and rainbow splendors. Niagara is the 
type of our Republic, and the type becomes clearer 
and clearer as we ponder our nation's history. 
What see we in America from the platform of 
history! Changes, revolutions, strifes, sects and 
factions pitted against sects and factions, wars. 



OUR PATRIOTIC DEAD. 



495 



foreign and civil, cruel slavery, confederacies of 
evil; but out of the turbulence and conflicts of 
opinions rises the Republic, purified from slavery, 
and with a hundred institutions for the free devel- 
opment of mankind, and with a welcome to the 
oppressed of all lands. Only one thing is needed, 
and that one thing is that we shall be true. Amer- 
ica, honor the right and the right will honor you. 
America, honor God and God will honor you. 
Credit Him with your liberty, and praise Him 
for your civilization. In the North and in the 
South make His unerring law the law of the nation. 
This and this only is solid patriotism ; this and this 
only is a patriotism fit to match the patriotism of 
those who fell upon the battle-field. 



XVI. 

THE BLACK FOREFATHERS ; OR, THE NEGRO 
RACE A FACTOR IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 



497 



XVI. 

THE BLACK FOREFATHERS; OR, THE 
NEGRO RACE A FACTOR IN AMER- 
ICAN HISTORY.* 

The service to-night is an historical service. 
We are in search of history. And, to start with, 
allow me to say that we possess nothing more 
valuable than history. History broadens human 
life by bringing the life of one man into touch with 
the lives of all men. History makes us familiar 
with the shining footprints of God who walks 
eternal among the ages. History warns us. His- 
tory instructs us. History reveals the issue of moral 
principles, when these are acted out in life, and 
are carried to their logical ultimatum. History en- 
riches us. History gathers for us the treasures of 
the past, and lays at our feet the experiences and 
the accumulations and the attainments and the 
ideals of those who have lived before us. History 
teaches us our indebtedness to the past. 

The advantage of living in the twentieth cen- 
tury is this — we possess the riches of all the cen- 
turies. Is not this something? Is it not some- 

* One of a series of Forefathers' Day addresses by David 
Gregg, D.D. 

501 



602 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

thing to you that somebody cleared the American 
forests, exterminated the beasts of prey, opened 
the mines, improved the crops, erected the schools 
and the churches, and made the civilization into 
which you were born ? The doing of these tilings, 
so far as you are concerned, constitutes the differ- 
ence between riches and poverty, ignorance and 
education, hardship and luxury, barbarism and 
education. 

We have not made ourselves nationally ; we 
have been made. We are an evolution; and the 
attitude of gratitude is our becoming attitude. 
We did not dig up the first precious gold ; we did 
not unlock the first secrets of philosophy; we 
were not the first to give tone to the moral sense ; 
we did not first think the Republic into being. I 
can hear the drum-beat of the American Revolu- 
tion as far back as the seventeenth century. We 
were not the first to think of the welfare of the 
^ masses, or to assert the rights of the individual. 
We are not half so wise as we take ourselves to 
be. Back of our new machinery, of our new pro- 
cesses of industry, of our improved furniture, of 
our finer clothes, of our easier methods of locomo- 
tion, of our national life, and of our increased 
facilities for exchange of thought, are the old, 
slow-crawling, worm-moving ages. We have re- 
ceived our inheritance as a bequeathment from 
our civil fathers, and it is our duty to make 
acknowledgment of our indebtedness, and to cele- 



THE BLACK FOREFA THERS. 



503 



brate the reign of God in their lives. This we do 
by observing a memorial day in honor of the 
fideHty and push and heroism and religion and 
patriotism of our forefathers. 

The study of the lives of the makers of our 
Republic is not necessarily a secular study ; it 
may be, and it should be, a religious study. Our 
fathers came here, and built here largely, if not 
solely, in the interest of religion. This was so 
with the Huguenots and the Hollanders; this 
was so with the Episcopalians of Virginia ; this 
was so with the Quakers of Pennsylvania ; this 
was so with the Covenanters of the Carolinas; 
and this was so with the Pilgrims and Puritans of 
New England. We believe that the American 
Republic is the creation of God, and that it has a 
grand commission from God to work for liberty 
among the nations of the world ; therefore, to us, 
the study of the Republic as a creation and in- 
tention of God is from Alpha to Omega a religi- 
ous exercise. It is as much our duty to know 
our country as it is to know ourselves. 

The object of this service is to reach a fuller and 
a more accurate knowledge of our country. To- 
night, ^in thought, we visit the graves of our 
nation's heroes, that we may play the noble part 
of Walter Scott's famous character "Old Mor- 
tality "—clear away the moss from the tombstones 
of the martyrs in the cause of liberty, and chisel 
anew their names into the solid granite, that they 



604 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

may have a new earthly immortahty ; and a new 
and a truer rating among those who enjoy the 
fruitage of their lives. 

From our previous historical studies we have 
discovered that our country is God's great loom 
for the interweaving of the peoples of the earth. 
The noble men and noble women from the differ- 
ent races of the old world are the threads of silk 
and of silver and of gold ; and the fabric woven 
is the American Republic, beautiful with its holy 
freedom, its constitutional rights and its magnifi- 
cent and elevating institutions, both civil and 
religious. The fabric of our national civilization, 
which is distinctively American, is complex, and 
the credit for its beauty and strength and value 
should be as manifold as its contributing elements 
are multifold. There should be honest recogni- 
tion given all around. The highest type of man- 
hood built into our civic personality should be 
admired and praised, no matter from what race it 
has come. 

During the previous Forefathers* Services held 
in this temple, in studying the wonderful fabric 
woven in God's loom, we have studied it thread 
by thread, and have found each thread a sufficient 
topic in itself. We have held up into the light 
the rich yellow and golden thread of Old Holland, 
and the tri-colored thread of the French Hugue- 
not refugees, and the thread of true blue which 
the Scotch and their descendants brought ; and 



THE BLA CK FOREFA THERS. 505 

thus on, and thus on. To-night the tune has come 
when we should hold up into the b'ght the jet 
black thread contributed to the national fabric by 
the Afro-American. Why not the black thread 
as well as the true blue, as well as the tri-colored, 
as well as the rich 5''ellovv and golden ? If the 
Afro-American has helped in the construction of 
our Republic, he should get the credit. If his 
sufferings through the long centuries have worked 
out any problem relative to human liberty, or 
illustrated any grand and helpful moral principle, 
or set into the clear light the righteous and un- 
changeable methods of God in dealing with 
nations ; if his unrequited toil has built up the 
wealth of the country, cleared its plantations and 
wrought up its soil to a greater productive power ; 
if the manacles and chains which he wore with 
such patience have been factors in making men 
think, in calling out human sympathy, in making 
magnificent champions for liberty, and in inaugu- 
rating a conflict which has in anywise purified our 
great Republic and made it over into greater 
accord with the ideal of God — made it more con- 
sistent with itself, made it more of an example to 
the other nations who are struggling upward and 
libertyward and Godward : then it is only the 
manly thing and the just thing to say so; and to 
give him open credit for that which legitimately 
belongs to him. Would you deny the Afro- 
American a place in this course of addresses on 



506 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

" The Makers of the American Republic " ? You 
cannot do that ; for he was here before the Repub- 
lic was; he took his humble part in the American 
Revolution, and he has been an influence ever 
since, directly and indirectly shaping our national 
life. His American pedigree is among the most 
ancient. He is not an alien. He was here before 
the Pilgrim Fathers were. He was here before the 
Puritans were. He was here before the Scotch 
and their descendants were. He was here be- 
fore the Huguenots were. The Virginians only, 
the first of all the colonists, preceded him here. 
The Virginian colony came in 1607 ; the Afro- 
Americans came in 1619, only twelve years after. 
They were landed at Jamestown, Va., by a Dutch 
slave ship, the year before the Mayfloiuer touched 
Plymouth Rock. You see from this that our 
Afro- American citizens belong to the F.F.V.'s- 
ihe first families of Virginia. In America that 
usually passes for aristocracy. Would you rudely 
brush against the first families of Virginia and 
displace them from the ranks of " The Makers of 
the American Republic"? It cannot be done. 
The Afro-American is an American citizen, and 
he has precisely the same constitutional rights 
that you have; he has the same civil standing. 
And numerically, he this day bulks more than 
one-eighth of the entire population of the Re- 
public. 

It is mine in a plain and simple way to tell his 



THE BLACK FOREFATHERS. 507 

story to-night. He has been here from the be- 
ginning. True, he has been all these years in 
ecHpse ; but an orb in eclipse does not cease to 
be, and does not cease to exert an influence; 
he has not ceased to be, or to be an influential 
factor. 

My fellow-men, we under-rate the American 
black man. The white man is in the age of gold, 
and the black man is in the age of iron ; and be- 
cause of this we inwardly despise him and discount 
him. It is not his fault that he is in the age of 
iron while we are in the age of gold. It is the 
fault of the dehumanizing slavery to which we, by 
brute force, relegated him. He is of our making 
and not of his own making. Give him a chance 
to make himself, before you judge him. Give him 
two hundred and fifty years of the white man's 
liberty in America, before you rate him and his 
possibilities, and decide his future. Give him the 
white man's opportunities and environment, be- 
fore you pass a final irreversible sentence. This, 
and this only, is justice. This is what you would 
demand, if you were in his place. This our God 
will grant him in His judgment ; for our God is 
no respecter of persons. Remember the centuries 
of the past, and what these centuries have 
brought him — the bondage of illiteracy, the in- 
dustrial servitude, the subjection to white liber- 
tinism, the dogma of white supremacy, which he 
perpetually heard preached and the judicial in- 



508 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

justice which ground him down every time he 
attempted to rise. What better would the white 
race be, than the black race is, under such degra- 
dation ? " Ah," I hear you say, " if there had 
been any manhood in the black race, they would 
not have submitted to slavery for two centuries 
and a half. America could not have held 
4,000,000 of the Anglo-Saxon race in bondage 
for that length of time. No power on earth 
could. The weakness of the black race is inher- 
ent, it is in the very core of the race — just as 
strength and dominance are in the core of the 
Anglo-Saxon race." That is good as a piece of 
declamation ; but that is not history. In Europe 
the boasted Anglo-Saxon race was held in abject 
slavery just twice the period that the Afro-Ameri- 
can was held in slavery on this continent. For 
five continuous consecutive centuries were the 
Anglo-Saxons slaves ; and their freedom, when it 
came, came not from themselves, but from the 
outside — from the operation of the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ, of which they as yet knew nothing. 
This has been the source of all human liberty 
during the long Christian era — the Gospel. " Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free." 

" He is a freeman whom the truth makes free ; 
And all are slaves besides." 

On the item of being held in bondage, the less 



THE BLA CK FOKEFA THERS. 5^9 

the Anglo-Saxon talks the better, So far as I 
have been able to search history, there has been 
only one noted case where a race held in slavery 
has unaided broken its own chains ; and by its 
own sword won its own freedom. That was the 
black race— the black race of St. Domingo. If 
there is any other case, produce it. The blacks 
of St. Domingo by their own sword won their own 
liberty, and set up the famous Black Republic. 
Where is there the parallel of this, O ye Anglo- 
Saxons, in the history of which you boast } This 
fact of history is remarkable in view of the hoot- 
ings to which the black man is subjected to-day. 
My fellow-men, there is something in the black 
race. God has made no failure here. Just as the 
white man has had his Waterloos and Thermopy. 
laes, his Bacons and Shakespeares and Hampdens 
and Washingtons and Franklins and Lincolns ; 
even so the black man has had his historic spots,' 
and his race-representatives to act as arguments of 
what his race is, and of what it can do. He has his 
catalogue of the great, and it is no mean catalogue. 
Read these names as recorded by the pen of his- 
tory. Benjamin Banneker, the Negro astronomer 
and philosopher, whose fame in the eighteenth 
century filled two continents. Thomas Fuller, 
the mathematician, known as the Virginian Cal- 
culator. James Derham, the physician of New 
Orleans. George W. Williams, the historian. 
Phyllis Wheatley, the slave poetess who was feted 



510 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

by the nobility of England, and honored by 
George Washington, and who carried London by 
storm. Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Black Napo- 
leon, whom Wendell Phillips, in one of his great- 
est orations, makes greater than Napoleon. 
Sebastian Gomez, the painter who towered above 
all the pupils in the school of art under the famous 
painter Murillo. Alexander Dumas, the literary 
genius, the peer of any. Bishop Crovvther, of 
Africa, in receiving whom, in Exeter Hall, the elite 
of England rose to their feet. Frederick Douglass, 
the orator, who during the anti-slavery conflict 
was one of the focal points of heat and light, 
vitalizing the heart and clarifying the vision of 
the country, and arousing the public conscience. 
I heard him make one of the last addresses of his 
life. It was at Chicago, in one of the famous 
world-congresses. He was answering a noted 
Southern professor and orator from North Carolina 
who had made an attack on the rights of the black 
race. His address was impromptu, but it was 
eloquence simon pure. It was logic at a white 
heat. It was impromptu, but his whole life 
struggle was in it. When he finished there was 
no Southern orator and professor left. But there 
were blisters left upon the hands of almost every 
white man present. We applauded him, because 
we could not help it. I never expect to hear that 
specimen of oratory surpassed. God was talking 
through ebony that day and pleading the cause 



THE BLACK FOREFA THERS, SU 

of universal human liberty and love. When you 
make up your estimate of the black race, remember 
this roll of honor. Remember also the great 
strides of progress which the Afro American has 
made since the Emancipation. Remember the 
great universities which he has erected in the 
Southland. Take into your reckoning Hampden 
and Fisk and Berea and Straight and Livingstone 
and Bidden and .Tuskegee and Atlanta University. 
Since the Civil War the Freedman has been one 
of the surprises of history. These universities 
are all of them miracles of nineteenth century 
progress. General Armstrong, who will be named 
in history with Lincoln and Grant as one of the 
fathers of the new reconstructed Republic, at 
Hampden, Va., in sight of the beach where the 
prow of the Dutch slave ship struck our shores 
and landed the first cargo of Negro slaves, built 
the Hampden Industrial and Normal College for 
Negroes. That has been a great success. It 
has been called a marvel. But there were white 
men in it, and its president was a white man. 
Booker Washington, one of General Armstrong's 
pupils, catching the General's inspiration and fol- 
lowing Hampden as a model, has built Tuskegee 
Institute, Alabama, and has made it no less of a 
success ; and there is no one in this second Hamp- 
den but Negroes, from the president to the lowest 
factotum. It is Afro-American from A to Z. 
Of the Afro-Americans in our land no less than 



612 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

30,000 young men and women are graduates from 
schools, North and South. 

What will not the black man be, when there is 
equalization of opportunities in our American 
Republic ? Remember what the black man has 
done in his new career, and during these days 
when he has had the making of himself, when you 
make your estimate of the Afro-American citizen. 

But let us come closer to the -subject in hand ! 
Our question is. What has the Afro-American 
done for our country as one of the Makers of the 
American Republic? You may call him an inci- 
dental factor, a collateral factor ; but a factor he 
has been. As such what has he done ? That is 
the question. He has done four things, and 
these four things I wish to set before you in 
numerical order. 

I. He has enriched tJie soil of America by build- 
ing into it the wealth of his manual toil, a?td he 
has filled the coffers of American commerce by the 
products of his industry. 

This will be recognized as nation-building by all 
political science. This kind of building the black 
man carried on without a break and without 
remuneration, for one-quarter of a millennium. 
American Republic, you see your debt. The 
black forefathers are among our creditors. They 
are creditors, not debtors. We owe them for two 
hundred and fifty years of labor, the proceeds of 
which have gone to swell the aggregate of our na- 



THE BLA CK FOREFA THERS. 5 1 3 

tional wealth, and to clear the lands, and to build 
the churches and schools and warehouses of the 
South, and to enhance the profits of Northern in- 
dustries, and to help make the American Repub- 
lic invincible in power and unprecedented in pros- 
perity. The South never was a manufacturing 
community. But the North has always been such. 
The slave labor g^ave the South the money with 
which it purchased our Northern manufactures. 
You know the money the slaves brought the South. 
The State of Virginia alone realized as much as 
$24,000,000 a year from the slaves it reared and 
sold to the cotton-producing states further South. 
We see here the secret of the existence and spread 
of American slavery. It was fostered and enlarged 
and sustained because of the money that was in 
it. The love of money ! That was the root of 
American slavery. When the Declaration of In- 
dependence was issued, it was never the intention 
of colonies North or South, with perhaps the ex- 
ception of South Corolina, to perpetuate slavery. 
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, all the Revolu- 
tionary leaders, intended the gradual abolition of 
slavery. They saw the inconsistency of holding 
the Negro as a slave and at the same time push- 
ing the Revolution for their own liberty. When 
suit was brought in New England for the service 
of a slave, the Chief Justice laid down as law that 
the Declaration of Independence, which pro- 
nounced all men equal, and equally entitled to 
33 



514 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, was itself 
a bill of emancipation ; and he refused to yield up 
the slave for service. But a change came over 
the spirit of our civil fathers' dreams. The cotton- 
gin was invented, and this made the cultivation of 
cotton enormously remunerative. This opened 
the cotton market of the world. The slave was the 
cultivator of the cotton, and so this increased the 
value of the slave and the worth of his labor. 
Even men who believed in the moral law and in 
the evils of slavery were injuriously affected. 
" Slaves which before brought only S300 brought 
$600. That knocked away one-third of their 
adherence to the moral law. The price of slaves 
rose to $700 ; then half of the moral law went. 
They brought $800 and $900; and then there was 
no such thing as moral law. Finally the price 
of slaves rose to $1,000 and $1,200; and then 
slavery was looked upon as one of the beatitudes. 
This it was which checked the cause of emancipa- 
tion and made slavery a permanent institution." 
This created the slave oligarchy, which ruled 
America in the interest of slavery for the fifty 
years prior to our Civil War. Slavery was now 
embedded in our commerce. Its products opened 
a market with France and with England. The 
result of this was the incoming of millions and 
millions of dollars. From the product of black 
labor in the cotton fields we supplied the factories 
of Great Britain. This was the reason that, during 



THE BLA CK FOREFA THERS. 515 

our Civil War, England was tempted to recognize 
the Southern Confederacy, and why Gladstone 
said : " Jefferson Davis has called into being a 
great nation." 

You see now the place of the black forefathers in 
American history. Though they were brought 
here under compulsion, and were compelled to 
labor here under the taskmaster's cruel lash, still 
they built up our commerce, they made our lands 
fruitful, and they filled the coffers of our land with 
gold. The American Republic owes the black 
man a great debt, and God Almighty is keeping 
the black man here that our Christian Republic 
may have a chance to acknowledge its indebted- 
ness and pay that debt. 

2. The black forefathers gave their services as 
soldiers in the War of the Revolution, and laid 
down their lives as t lie price of American Indepeii- 
dence. 

The very first blood shed in the American 
Revolution was the blood of a Negro. The first 
man to give his life for our national liberty was 
Crispus Attucks, the black slave. It was he who 
fell in the famous Boston massacre, March 5, 1770, 
six years before the Battle of Bunker Hill. Twenty 
years before that, he came to Boston as a run- 
away slave, and was advertised for in the Boston 
papers. But he succeeded in eluding his pursuers. 
For twenty years he drank in the sweets of liberty. 
He was a follower of Otis and learned his maxims : 



616 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 

" Taxation without representation is tyranny " ; 
** When the government ceases to protect, the 
citizen ceases to owe allegiance " ; " Equality and 
power of the whole without distinction of color" ; 
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God " ; 
" Some causes carry in them the right of revolu- 
tion." His patriotism was not a mere spasm, 
it was an education. When the tyranny of the 
British soldiers became insufferable on the streets 
of Boston, Crispus Attucks wrote a letter to the 
Tory Governor holding him responsible for the 
acts of his soldiers. The letter closes with this 
warning: "Sir, you shall hear from us." Of 
course the Governor took no notice of this com- 
munication. At last, when the tyranny of the 
soldiers exceeded all endurance, Crispus Attucks 
raised the cry : " The way to get rid of these 
soldiers is to attack the main guard." Thrilled 
by his words, a company of men rallied round him, 
and, following him as their leader, made an attack 
on the main guard. Under the fire of the soldiers 
Crispus Attucks was the first to fall. The city of 
Boston carried his body to Fanueil Hall, where it 
lay in state, and afterwards they buried it with 
honor in the spot where it still rests. Nor is this 
all. His name has been held in honor ever since. 
The great John Hancock delivered an oration on 
the anniversary of his fall. Wendell Phillips also 
gave him an eloquent oration. When I was in 
Boston as pastor of old Park Street Church, the 



THE BLA CK FOREFA THERS. 517 

city of Boston erected a statue to him on Boston 
Common, and the town council asked me to make 
the dedicatory prayer when the monument was un- 
veiled. Later still, honor has come to him. The 
last time I was in Boston I saw a new and fine pic- 
ture entitled " The Famous Boston Massacre " on 
exhibition in Tremont Teinple, and in the fore- 
front, according to the dictation of history, is the 
black man, Crispus Attucks, giving up his life for 
our liberty. As one of our historians says : "He, 
Crispus Attucks, made the Revolution something 
besides talk. He stood in the front ranks of the 
men who dared. The massacre in which he fell 
was the baptism of the Revolution into forcible 
resistance, without which it would have been 
simply a discussion of rights. When we talk of 
courage, he rises with his dark face, the emblem 
of the Revolution at its dawn." 

Bunker Hill has a charm for loyal Americans, 
and so has the story of the battle which was fought 
there. But the battle of Bunker Hill was not 
without its black hero. Next to General Warren 
no man has received such praise as Peter Salem, 
the black slave. This was the eulogy of men in 
the ranks and of officers on duty as they told of 
his bravery to the General Court of Massachusetts : 
" In the person of this Negro centres a brave and 
gallant soldier. The reward due to so great and 
distinguished a champion we submit to Con- 
gress." This is the story of this black man. When 



518 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Major Pitcairn, a gallant officer who led the attack 
against one of the redoubts on Bunker Hill, leaped 
into the midst of the Continental army exultantly 
crying, " The day is ours ! " his heroism startled and 
dashed the men who were fighting for liberty, 
Pitcairn and his dash had won the day. Only one 
man seemed to have retained full control of his 
senses in the sudden danger — and he was Peter 
Salem, the black. With a soldier's coolness he raised 
his musket, and with certain aim brought down 
the arch-enemy of freedom, and turned back for a 
time the tide of battle. This man went all through 
the war, from the fall of Pitcairn to the surrender 
of Cornwallis. A monument in the town of Fram- 
ingham commemorates his patriotism. 

At Red Bank 400 blacks met and repulsed 1,500 
Hessians, led by Count Dunlop. This was one of 
the most heroic actions of the Revolution. A 
company of colored troops rescued Captain 
Lawrence, the founder of one of the wealthiest 
and best families of Boston. They made it possible 
for this family to exist. At the time of the 
Revolution there were only 50,000 blacks in the 
North, but these 50,000 gave 5,000 to the Conti- 
nental army ; that is, they gave one-tenth of their 
whole number. No other race did better than that. 
Sparks says : " Many black soldiers were in the 
service during all stages of the war." Bancroft 
says: " History should not forget to record that 
the Negroes of the Colonics took their places side 



THE BLA CK FOREFA THERS. 519 

by side with the other soldiers of the Revolution." 
But this is nothing unusual. They have done their 
full part in all the wars of our nation. The black 
phalanx did grand work in the Civil War, as Port 
Hudson and Fort Wagner testify. And in the 
Spanish war we know the part played by the Ninth 
and Tenth Regiments of cavalry, and the Twenty- 
fourth and Twenty-fifth Regiments of infantry. 
These were black troops, all of large stature, and 
they astonished the Spaniards by their skill and 
bravery. They played an especially brilliant part 
in the battle of El Caney and in the charge up 
San Juan Hill. When have the blacks ever failed 
their country in the time of war? 

In the third place : — 

3. The black forcfatJiers have rendered a great 
serviee in building up the American Republic by 
and through the champions of liberty zuhom their 
sufferings called into being and made fire-pillars in 
the land. 

Helpless, weak, suffering, chained, the subjects 
of the cruel lash, oppressed by hard taskmasters 
what can these poor slaves do? Here again they 
become the surprise of history. For no race ever 
did more for America than they did, and that while 
they were downtrodden. Under God their pitiable 
condition became a national power. Their slavery 
became an instrumentality. Their bitter cries 
reached the best brain and heart of the Western 
continent, and raised them up friends. These 



620 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

friends were the champions of liberty, and the 
saviors and reconstructors of the Republic. How 
wonderfully God works ! The slave trade in the 
British West Indies gave England some of her 
grandest Englishmen — Clarkson and Wilberforce 
and Pitt. The Grecian Helen's captivity gave the 
world its earliest, and its still grandest epic. So the 
oppression of the blacks in our land gave the United 
States its finest literature and its finest principles ; 
its finest institutions and its finest national move- 
ments; its finest triumphs and its finest men. It 
is a marvel of Providence to behold the men and 
women who espoused the anti-slavery cause, and 
who filled the ofBce of nurse to the slave child. 
Some of them were born to play the part of sov- 
ereigns and fill the office of autocrats in human 
society; yet they devoted their all to the cause of 
freedom.. They were men of insight. They saw 
the image of God in His black sons, and the cause 
of God in the movement made for their liberation. 
They were men of hope; even at the worst they 
saw the God decreed victory on its certain march. 
This is the way one of the great poets expressed 
their hope: 

" Right forever on the scaffold ; 

Wrong forever on the throne ; 
But that scaffold sways the future, 

And behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, 

Keeping watch above His own." 



THE BLACK FOREFATHERS. 521 

They were men who hated all compromises with 
sin and oppression. They were men of radical 
convictions. They were men ready to make all 
needed sacrifices to give the cause of freedom 
success. They were men who burned their ships 
behind them, and called the conflict "the irre- 
pressible conflict." They were sensitive to the 
truth and to the call of God. Emancipation was 
their goal, for they believed that only by eman- 
cipation could the nation repudiate its sin, and 
do justice to the enslaved. My fellow-men, do 
you know that the men who were made in the 
colossal conflicts of this moral era which was the 
heroic period of our Republic, were the con- 
science of the Republic, the men who drummed 
the churches up to their duty, and who, by their 
redhot philippics, woke up a laggard Christianity ; 
and do you know that these men are the men who 
to-day are regarded as our foremost representatives 
by the nations of the world ? They are the men 
who are quoted abroad. They are the men who 
have made the air of the world vital with the love of 
liberty and America the leader in the cause of 
liberty. When the nations abroad wish to honor 
us and pronounce compliments upon us, they 
speak of us as the land of these men. These are 
the men who rank with Washington and JefTerson 
and the Adamses, and the fathers of the earlier 
period. These are the people who gave us our 
nineteenth century watchwords of liberty, and 



522 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the " Battle Hymn of the RepubHc," and " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," and the " Marseillaise " of the 
Grand Army, and the Emancipation Proclamation, 
and the amended Constitution, a guarantee of 
liberty with every inconsistency blotted out for- 
ever. 

The story of these men forms the most inter- 
esting part of the whole of the history of the 
United States; and yet here to-night, in dealing 
with it, I am compelled to satisfy myself with 
the mere mention of names when I ought in 
justice to give full biographies. Do you ask me 
to call the roll ? Here are some of the names : 

William Lloyd Garrison. He was the Martin 
Luther of his day, and his words were half 
battles. " I am in earnest. I will not equivo- 
cate. I will not retreat a single inch ; and I will 
be heard." He was heard when he affirmed, 
though mobs and prison bars awaited him. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. I will let the black 
man eulogize her. The popular living writer, 
whom Howelb has recently introduced to the 
American Republic with unstinted praise, the 
black man, Paul Laurence Dunbar, a graduate of 
Harvard, a poet, and a man of a marvellous pen 
thus speaks of Mrs. Stowe: 

" She told the story; and the whole world wept 
At wrongs and cruelties it had not known 
But for this fearless woman's voice alone. 

She spoke to consciences that long had slept ; 



THE BLACK FOREFA THERS. 523 

Her message — Freedom's clear reveille — swept 

From heedless hovel to complacent throne. 

Command and prophecy were in the tone ; 
And from its sheath the sword of justice leapt, 
Around two peoples swelled a fiery wave, 

But both came forth transfigured from the flame. 
Blest be the hand that dared be strong to save, 

And blest be she who in our weakness came — 
Prophet and priestess ! At one stroke she gave 

A race to freedom and herself to fame." 

It has not been two months since that poem saw 
the light ; yet even now it has gone all the rounds 
of the literary world. I quote it from my Lon- 
don newspaper which I received last week. 

The other names upon the roll before me I can 
only pronounce ; but each name is a whole his- 
tory, and represents a haloed head : 

John Brown, of Harper's Ferry; Wendell 
Phillips; John Greenleaf Whittier; Charles Sum- 
ner ; James Russell Lowell ; Henry Wilson ; 
Horace Greeley ; U. S. Grant, the great soldier 
who sleeps at the mouth of the Hudson and the 
gates of the Atlantic ; Sherman ; Sheridan ; 
Henry Ward Beecher, whose oratory swung 
England into line with our marching troops. 
This was the greatest oratorical feat of the nine- 
teenth century. I read those orations of his once 
every year. 

Then the greatest name of all — Abraham Lin- 
coln. That name put to the Emancipation Pro- 
clamation made the American Republic the land 



624 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of the free, and completed the work of all the 
fathers of our nation. 

What name of this list can we afford to drop 
from our American history ? Not one. These 
are our greatest names, and they are the human 
powers behind the on-marching cause of liberty. 
They are the products of the sufferings of the 
American black man. 

But I must take up my fourth and last point. 
It is this : 

4. The Afro-Americans have helped to make the 
American Republic by contributing an experience 
which has worked out and illustrated and illumined 
great beacon principles for the guidance of our 
natio7t in the future. 

Grand men and holy principles ! These are a 
mighty contribution. What race has contributed 
greater blessings than these to our Common- 
wealth ? You have seen the men for whom we 
are indebted to the blacks of America ; now look 
at the principles which they have been the instru- 
ments of setting into the light ! We certainly have 
reached great principles in the conduct and the 
final issue of our Civil War. That war, from begin- 
ning to end, was a war of principles. The principle 
of the solidarity of the human race was established. 
Mankind is one. What degrades man here de- 
grades man everywhere. What degrades man in 
the South degraded man in the North. What will 
lift the human race in America will lift it in England. 



THE BLACK FORE FA THERS. 505 

Another principle was established, viz. : A nation is 
subject to the law of retribution. Men love irre- 
sponsible power ; but there is no such thing as irre- 
sponsible power. Men may not be able to bring 
you to an account ; but God is able, and God will. 
The strong cannot forever trample the weak into the 
ground. God will take the part of the weak. We 
have got to reckon with God. No matter how 
powerful the oppressing power may be, God is 
more powerful. Haman cannot hang Mordecai, 
even though Mordecai be but a despised Jew. 
You know how that Dreyfus case of centuries ago 
ended. Egypt cannot enslave God's Covenant 
people without paying the penalty. Egypt lost in 
the end. We thought we could outwit God when 
we manacled the black man and took his labor for 
nothing. But how did our experiment end? As 
a nation we paid life for life, and dollar for dollar. 
We are not yet through paying the bills of African 
slavery. For every drop of black blood which the 
lash of the taskmaster drew, the bullet drew a drop 
of white blood to match it. God is an accurate 
accountant. When General Grant, on Mt. Mac- 
Gregor, was writing his story of the Great Struggle, 
ere he yielded his life to disease, he wrote one day 
on the edge of his proof sheets, with a weary hand : 
" No nation can do wrong without paying the 
penalty," and that is what this Republic learned in 
the Civil War. 

My fellow-rnen, these are principles which carry 



526 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

in them our future life as a nation. Have we learned 
them so as to make a practical use of them ? We 
have abolished the personal slavery of the Afro- 
American — have we also abolished collective 
slavery, i.e., race slavery? Let us in no form, by 
nullification, or by fraud, or by intimidation, rob 
our black citizens of their rights. Let us not 
repeat the folly of the past. If we do, God Avill 
repeat the execution of His law of righteous 
retribution. He will do over again what He did 
before, and He will do more than He did before. 
As a nation we must act justly with the weaker 
races that have come under our flag. God is on the 
side of the weaker races ; let us be on their side also. 
Their rights are our rights. Their future is our 
future. Their country is our country. Our 
citizenship is one and our flag is one. 

As citizens of the United States, as disciples of 
Him who came into the world to make all men free, 
let us call upon all loyal Americans to be true to 
our republicanism, and to our idea of a government 
of the people, by the people, for the people. If 
we prove true and loyal to ourselves, and true and 
loyal to our Republic's future, and true and loyal 
to the great cause of human freedom, and true and 
loyal to our present opportunity, we will stand up 
like men, showing deference to nothing but the 
right, and we will demand for our Republic, from 
this time on : One Constitution — one standard of 
loyalty, protection ; one flag — one country without 



THE BLACK FORE FA THERS. 527 

any compass lines ; one Government without any 
race dominance ; and one Christianity, whose 
anthem of praise to God shall be made up of the 
feelings and the glad acclaims of men and women 
composed of every kindred and people, whom God 
has gathered into our land from all the continents 
of the earth. Let this Republic of ours be modelled 
after the Republic of God in heaven, the pillars of 
which are Love and Justice and Truth. 






V 



